


Light of a Distant Sun

by Regann



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clark Tells the Truth, Crossover, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 09:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9878489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regann/pseuds/Regann
Summary: At one point in time, there are any number of futures possible, no matter how improbable they may seem. With a little help, Clark and Lex might find a better destiny waiting for them than the ones they're heading toward. Goes AU with the events of S3's "Extinction," and features a special guest appearance from a character from Gene Roddenberry's "Andromeda."





	1. Chapter 1

You lived! And _your_ crest too, though but once, and yours too  
Is gladdened by the light of a distant sun,  
The radiance of a better age. The  
Heralds who looked for your heart have found it.  
  
\-- "Rousseau," Friedrich Holderlin

 

 

_Surrounded by ice and shadows, Lex's certainty burns bright, even as he splinters under the weight of what he's learned.  
  
Clark Kent is the Traveler and he must be stopped.  
  
Even if it will break Lex's heart.  
  
The shadows in the chamber fall and bend in strange arches, an alien landscape for this final act. Lex holds destiny in his hand and he knows what he needs to do.  
  
Time slows around him, and the moment lingers as if it will ever end. Lex feels the presence of someone behind him and he turns, expecting Clark. But the person he sees is as foreign to him as Clark would be familiar, draped in darkness and mystery.  
  
The figure is female; he can just make out bright eyes, pale curls, and skin that gleams violet in the shifting light of the cave. She steps forward, and that feeling of timelessness grows until Lex can hardly breathe beneath its weight.  
  
Questions fire through his mind, but he doesn't get the chance to voice them before she speaks.  
  
"This was not the end I was expecting," she tells him. "I never thought we'd be here, with you trying to kill your friend."  
  
It's not even an accusation, the way she says it, but Lex rises to his own defense. "He's dangerous."  
  
"Dangerous? Clark?" She laughs and it's a bright, harsh sound. "Believe me, there are things much more dangerous waiting out there in the universe than Kal-El of Krypton."  
  
Lex wants to ask, but he can't, not that it matters because she shows him the answer. She moves until the light spills across her skin, but its violet color does not change. The tilt of her head reveals a pointed ear and there is nothing reassuring in the faint, mocking twist of her mouth as his eyes wander to the tail that curls around her leg.  
  
"What are you?"  
  
"It's not really that important," she says. "What matters is that this isn't the way it should be."  
  
"Oh, really?"  
  
"Yes. Luckily for you, Lex Luthor, this isn't a possibility wave that works for me."  
  
Lex notices one last unnatural thing about her.  
  
There are stars burning in her eyes._  
  
The dream had already begun to fade by the time Lex shuddered to wakefulness. He tried in vain to hold onto it, but it slipped away, leaving only vague impressions behind. Still, it took him another moment to push through the haze and orient himself to the present: he was at the castle, in his own bed. Helen had been taken care of, and he had a deed to present in the morning.   
  
Everything was as it should be.  
  
That thought comforted him, and Lex forced his body to relax back into slumber, whatever had disturbed him soothed away by the mantra.  
  
But, just before sleep claimed him again, he couldn't help but wonder when the landscape of his nightmares had turned into icy caves instead of the feverish hell of the island from which he'd only recently escaped.  
  
**  
  
Contrary to some selfish, naive hope, life in Smallville had marched on while Clark had been living as Kal in Metropolis. A whole summer had passed and all the usual things had happened: people had moved in, moved away, gotten married, divorced, started college, changed jobs -- Clark was still a little dizzy trying to absorb all the details his mom threw at him during meals, trying to erase the gulf between them created by his months away.  
  
One change Clark discovered on his own, thanks to a rather enthusiastic introduction outside of the Talon -- Smallville had gained a new florist. Her name was Trance Gemini and she had shown up that summer and opened up a shop on the same stretch of storefront as Lana's coffeehouse, specializing in rare and exotic plants. While Clark doubted anyone could actually be christened _Trance_ at birth, she was nice and friendly and uncomplicated at a time when everything around him wasn't. There were no hidden agendas or hurt feelings in the undercurrents of the idle conversations he had with Trance, which Clark found refreshing. She wasn't as arcane as Lana or as obdurate as Chloe or as ridiculously complex as Lex, and that simplicity was welcome.  
  
Despite the precarious nature of his truce with Lana, Clark couldn't bring himself to patronize any other coffee shop, so he chose only to visit on those occasions when she wasn't working. And even then he set himself up in the most unobtrusive spots he could find, nosed buried in his schoolwork, blending into the faux-Egyptian scenery as best he could.  
  
He had almost lost himself in the finer points of the United States judicial system one afternoon when he heard Trance say his name in greeting.  
  
"Hey, Trance," he said, looking up to see her standing at the edge of his table. She was smiling at him, holding a frothy beverage. "What's up?"  
  
"Nothing." She gestured toward the empty chair. "Can I...?"  
  
"Sure," he said, rearranging his books to make room on the table.   
  
Trance perched on the edge of her seat, holding her cup close with both hands. She glanced at his open Civics book. "That looks...interesting."  
  
"Oh, yeah, real interesting," he said, closing it. "Speaking of which, I noticed you had some new plant in your window today. What is that thing?"  
  
Trance smiled, wiggling her fingers in a vague way. "Just a little something I found somewhere."   
  
It hadn't looked like anything he had seen before, either in person or in a book, and Clark wondered who in town actually bought the exotic flowers Trance sold, especially when the Talon's flower stand and the Kent Farm already supplied the town with bouquet stables like roses, carnations and tulips.  
  
"Yeah, right."   
  
Trance began to explain in earnest about several of the new items she had recently added to her inventory, and Clark listened, nodding in all the right places. Once she had finished, he couldn't help but voice his earlier concern.  
  
"They sound great," he told her. "But I don't think you're going to sell many of them here in Smallville."  
  
"You never know," she said. "I've noticed that Smallville isn't your average small town."  
  
"Well, every small town has its own little quirks," he said.  
  
"Not like here," Trance said. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed. You grew up here."  
  
Clark reflected on his elusive desire for uncomplicated conversations. "Not really, no."  
  
Trance's eyes were steady on his. "Very strange things happen here with _alarming_ frequency."  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
She raised an eyebrow and her expression screamed disbelief. "Don't you?"  
  
Clark didn't like the speculative look in Trance's eyes -- a little too much like vintage Chloe -- or the faint mockery in her almost-smile which reminded him of Lex's expression every time he lied to him about his abilities. "I, uh..."  
  
Thankfully, Clark caught sight of said friend moving his way through the coffeehouse. "Lex!"  
  
"Clark." His eyes lingered on Trance, who turned her blond head toward him. "I hope I'm not interrupting?"  
  
"Not on my account," Trance said, her smile now wide and guileless as she stood. "I'm done anyway." She shook her empty mug as proof. "I'll see you around, Clark?"  
  
Clark nodded. "Later, Trance."  
  
Lex watched her walk away before he took the seat she had abandoned. "I hope I really wasn't interrupting something."  
  
"Just homework," Clark said, gesturing toward the scattered evidence.  
  
"Hitting the books?" Lex leaned back in his chair. "Is that why I haven't seen you around much lately?"  
  
"That, too." Clark wasn't sure how to put into words that he hadn't quite settled back into his old life, then wondered if maybe Lex was having the same problem. "How have you been?"  
  
Lex looked at his clasped hands and then back at Clark. "Adjusting," he finally said.   
  
"I know what you mean," Clark admitted.   
  
"I bet you do," Lex said.  
  
"When do you start back at LutherCorp?" Clark asked after the moment lingered too long, looking away to break the eye contact.  
  
"In a few days," Lex said.   
  
"Are you ready?" Clark figured Lex would understand the implied "for your father" in his question.  
  
From the slight twitch of the corner of his mouth, it seemed Lex did. "As ready I can be, I suppose. I just hope I'm...up to the challenge."  
  
Clark had his doubts about Lex's decision to return to his father's company, but it was just that -- Lex's decision. "As hard as you've been working, I'm sure you will be."  
  
Lex gave him a look. "I hope that's not part of the reason you've been scarce."  
  
Clark shrugged. "I know how much this means to you. I didn't want to be a bother."  
  
Lex seemed amused. "Clark, you're one of the few people in the world who I could never consider a bother."  
  
Something unclenched in Clark's chest at Lex's words, something he hadn't even realized was tense. He could feel a smile spread across his face. "Thanks, Lex."  
  
Lex actually smiled back. "So I can expect a friendly visit soon enough?"  
  
"Definitely," Clark said. "Soon."  
  
"I'll hold you to it," Lex said as his phone trilled in his pocket. "Don't be a stranger."  
  
As Clark watched Lex head away to take his undoubtedly important phone call, Clark promised himself that he'd make sure to see his friend again soon, even if it was just to recapture the feeling he'd had when Lex had said he couldn't ever be a bother.  
  
For the first time since he'd come back, it actually felt like home.  
  
**  
  
Lex wondered if it was a sign of strength or insanity that he had almost become accustomed to attempts on his life; whichever it was, he laid the blame on Smallville. While his life had been far from tranquil before he'd come to the quaint farming town, the frequency and severity of his near-death experiences had increased exponentially since he'd moved to the castle.   
  
The latest attempt on his life by Van McNulty was even more squarely the fault of the town -- the town and its strange meteors that had cost the boy his father and started him on the path of vigilante. If not for Clark, his return to LutherCorp would've ended rather auspiciously on the steps of the building, at the hands of a teenaged assassin.  
  
"If not for Clark" had become another recurring theme in Lex's life since his first day in Smallville. It seemed like every time he turned around, Clark was saving him, like he was his very own personal guardian angel in the unlikely guise of a flannel-clad farmboy. And like every other time Clark had saved the day, this newest rescue left Lex with even more questions about his enigmatic friend.  
  
As if summoned by his metaphysical presence in Lex's thoughts, Lex received word from one of the security agents stationed at the gate that Clark had arrived with a delivery. When he hadn't shown up in Lex's office within a few minutes of his arrival, Lex made his way to the side service entrance where the Kent pick-up truck stood just outside the door.  
  
"It's not time for more produce," Lex said as he stepped outside. He squinted a little against the late afternoon light, even muted as it was by the cloudy threat of a storm.  
  
"I'm not bringing artichokes," Clark told him. Out of the passenger side of the truck he pulled a complicated bouquet of epic proportions, all curling greenery and fragile, fragrant blooms. The light scent of something spicy hit Lex as Clark hauled the arrangement toward him.  
  
"Flowers, for me? Clark, you shouldn't have."  
  
Clark rolled his eyes behind the spiraling foliage. "I didn't," he told him. "Well, I did, just -- I was in town and Trance asked me to bring this out to you."  
  
"But I didn't order any flowers," Lex frowned.  
  
Clark shrugged as best he could with his hands full. "Maybe someone sent them to you?"  
  
"Because that makes more sense than a misdirected order," Lex said wryly as he snatched the card from the arrangement. It was blank, just a white card with a logo embossed in the corner, a stylized sun with a face.   
  
"Don't kill the messenger," Clark said. "Just -- here."  
  
Lex eyed the exotic arrangement again, then summoned the guard hovering near the door to relieve Clark of his burden. After the flowers were whisked away, Lex turned back to his friend. "When did you start making deliveries for Ms. Gemini?"  
  
"I ran into her in town," he explained, leaning back against the truck. "I wanted to swing by and check on you anyway, so..."  
  
"Kind of you, but unnecessary. I'm fine," Lex told him. "It's not the first time someone has tried to kill me, and I doubt it'll be the last."  
  
Clark gave him a look that reminded Lex of Martha Kent, all motherly disapproval. "Lex."  
  
"Any word on my would-be assassin?" Lex asked.  
  
Clark shook his head. "Nothing yet, but I know he's out there somewhere."  
  
Lex recognized the determined look on his face. "Let the police handle this, Clark," he told him. "There's no reason you should put yourself in the middle of this."  
  
"Yeah, I just..." Clark looked up from the ground, caught Lex's gaze with his own. "I'm glad you're all right."  
  
"All thanks to you." Lex nodded toward the door. "How about we head inside? No reason to stand around out here."  
  
Clark shook his head and straightened from his slouch. "I'd like to, but I can't. I haven't been home all day and my dad could use some help. Can't put those chores off any longer."  
  
"Understandable," Lex said, ignoring the part of him that was disappointed Clark couldn't stay. He really had missed his friend over the last few months. "Some other time?"  
  
"Yeah, of course," Clark said, going around to the driver's side of the truck. "Bye, Lex."  
  
Lex had turned away to enter the mansion when Clark suddenly let out a strangled scream, a sound of agony so fierce that it rattled Lex's teeth.  
  
"Clark?"   
  
He turned back in time to watch his friend's form disappear on the other side of the truck and he raced around to find Clark on the ground, blood seeping through the flannel that stretched across one strong shoulder. He was still keening in pain and Lex couldn't fight the horror it caused in him. "Clark!"  
  
Lex knelt beside him, yelling over his shoulder for one of his guards. If he had been thinking more clearly, he might've scanned the high ground for the shooter for his own safety, but his mind wasn't working on logic -- except the logic that Clark was hurt and he needed help. Lex cradled Clark's thrashing head in one hand and tried to soothe him. "Clark, you're hurt, we're going to get you to a doctor," he told him softly. "Just hang on."  
  
"No!" Somehow Clark pushed a coherent sound out of his tortured throat. "No...doctors. Lex, please..."  
  
Lex scowled, first at Clark and then at the door where a guard had finally appeared. He shouted at the agent to get his men out to check the perimeter, _now_ , and they scurried to comply. Lex ran his hands lightly over Clark's chest, his panic growing as he felt how shallow his breaths were. "Clark, what am I supposed to do? You've been shot and you need a doctor."  
  
Even in agony, watching him with fever-bright eyes, Clark's grip on his wrist was painfully strong. "No doctors, nobody. I can't, I can't, they'll..."  
  
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Lex ripped open Clark's flannel shirt to assess the damage. Maybe he could get Toby there before...  
  
What he saw on Clark's mangled shoulder stopped all his thoughts. It wasn't like any bullet wound Lex had ever seen before. Surrounding the bloody hole where the bullet had entered Clark, there were roiling greenish veins pulsing under Clark's skin. "Clark..."  
  
"Lex, please." Clark's voice was barely a whisper. "Get it out, please."  
  
For a second, Lex was frozen with indecision but the weak pulse under his hand and Clark's continued whimpers of pain galvanized him into action. He wasn't sure how he managed to drag his injured friend into the kitchen but he did, laying him out on the pristine floor. There were still pained sounds coming from Clark but they were growing weaker and Lex didn't want to consider the implications of that.   
  
He just hoped he was doing the right thing by complying with Clark's wishes over his own better judgment.  
  
In the modern, immaculate kitchen, it was simple to locate a knife, but Lex hesitated at Clark's side, blade hovering above the garish wound. Whatever was turning Clark's veins green was spreading, the color crawling down his chest, over his shoulder. Lex took a deep breath and probed the wound gently with the knife, trying to locate the bullet. Clark was restless under his none-too-steady hands, veins and tendons straining, and Lex growled in frustration as the bullet thwarted his search.   
  
He needed better equipment.  
  
Hoping he wasn't wasting precious time that meant the difference between life and death, Lex opened drawer after drawer full of state-of-the-art kitchen utensils until he stumbled upon the cook's fish bone pliers. Instead of kneeling beside Clark, Lex straddled him, resting one elbow on Clark's good shoulder in an attempt to keep him still as he made another attempt at finding the bullet. He could feel the dig of Clark's belt against his thigh as he leaned over and worked the serrated nose of the pliers into the wound, the steel slippery with Clark's bright, red blood.   
  
Finally, _finally,_ Lex felt the pliers close on the bullet and relief made him a little light-headed as he slowly pulled it out. He hadn't expected that his prize would be unmistakable green glow of meteor rock, its color a sickly contrast to Clark's blood on his shaky fingers. He looked at it, then tossed it away.   
  
But that wasn't even the biggest surprise because Lex looked back down in time to see Clark's skin knitting itself together, green veins and bloodied hole smoothing away and disappearing like they were never there, leaving unblemished skin in its place. If Lex hadn't seen the bullet hole with his own eyes, he might've never believed it had ever been there.   
  
"Son of a bitch."  
  
Clark lay as still as death under him, sweat beading on his forehead, features disturbingly slack.  
  
"Mr. Luthor?" A security agent rushed in through the open kitchen door. "Are you all right?"  
  
"I'm fine," he said, wiping a hand across his face, unmindful of the blood still on his fingers. "Did you catch the shooter?"  
  
"No, sir. We found his probable location, but he was long gone."  
  
"Of course he was."   
  
The agent cleared his throat. "Do you want me to call an ambulance for the boy?"  
  
Lex could still hear Clark's panicked pleas for no doctors and now he thought he had a few more pieces to that puzzle. "No," he said. "Just help me get him somewhere more comfortable."  
  
The usual litany of Clark-related questions in Lex's mind were second to a new chorus of Clark-related fears and worries. Clark had performed a lot of miracles since Lex had known him; Lex just hoped they hadn't finally run out.


	2. Chapter 2

As Clark slowly regained consciousness, he was aware of the lack of pain in his shoulder and the fact that he was laying on something much more comfortable than Lex's kitchen floor. The last thing he remembered clearly was the instant the Kryptonite bullet had torn through his shoulder; he dimly recalled the moments after, begging Lex through the haze of pain not to send for any doctors, and then Lex leaning over him, muttering under his breath as he removed the bullet.  
  
When the implications of it all sank in, Clark sat up quickly even as the action brought a wave of dizziness sweeping over him.  
  
"Clark?" It was Lex, sitting at his side in a chair. They were in the library, Clark stretched out on the sofa. "How are you feeling?"  
  
"Okay," he said. "A little woozy."   
  
"No doubt," Lex said. His elbows rested on his knees as he leaned toward Clark. "If I'm not mistaken, Van McNulty shot you with a bullet made of meteor rock."  
  
Lex said "meteor rock" with an anticipatory lilt that made Clark think that he might brandish it for proof, and he flinched against the expected pain caused by the Kryptonite's presence. When it didn't come, he relaxed to find Lex staring at him strangely, obviously expecting some kind of verbal response. "Uh, yeah."  
  
"But that wasn't his M.O. before." Lex was watching him with shrewd eyes, an unfathomable expression on his face.  
  
Clark started to shake his head, then regretted it. "No."  
  
"Any idea why?"  
  
Clark looked away before he answered. "Other than the fact that he's nuts?"  
  
"Misguided, perhaps, but not necessarily insane," Lex said. "Care to try again?"  
  
"Lex..."  
  
Something about his tone on that single word made Lex's spine straighten and his shoulders go stiff. "Clark, I dug a _bullet_ out of you at your request, without question." Each word was as sharp as the knife had been. "I don't think it's too much to ask that you tell me _something_ , like why I couldn't call a doctor or why your wound healed up miraculously."  
  
This was one of those conversations Clark always loathed with Lex and usually his friend had witnessed even less related to his powers. This time Lex had seen so much -- the Kryptonite bullet, his rapid healing. Clark wasn't even certain where to start lying to cover his tracks.   
  
"I don't have time for this," he said. "I need to go find Van. He's still out there with his hit list, and it doesn't look like he's going to stop on his own." Clark stood, letting his anger fuel his movements. Unfortunately, the world started to spin a little. He must've swayed on his feet because suddenly Lex's hand was on his healed shoulder, pushing him back down onto the sofa.   
  
His touch lingered. "Take it easy," Lex said. "Just because the meteor rocks have given you some kind of strange mutant ability doesn't mean..."  
  
Clark sighed, but remained seated. "I'm not infected by the meteor rocks, Lex."  
  
One pale eyebrow rose. "Pardon me if I have evidence to the contrary."  
  
"I'm telling you the truth." There was hurt in his voice, even though Clark knew he didn't have a reason for it. He lied to Lex all the time, it shouldn't pain so much that Lex called him on it.   
  
"And I'm supposed to just take your word for that, Clark?" Lex laughed a little, but it wasn't a pleasant sound. "I mean, it's not like our relationship has been built much on trust." Lex rose to his feet and moved across the space with sharp, jerky movements, as if he could no longer stand to be so close to Clark.  
  
Clark ignored the echo of dizziness as he followed, a hand on Lex's shoulder before he thought about it. "You don't understand."  
  
Lex shrugged off his hand, spinning to face him. "I understand perfectly," he told him and Clark flinched from the anger that shook his friend's voice. He had never seen Lex so angry -- at his father, yes, but not at Clark. "I understand that you have lied to me for two years and I've accepted it for the sake of this friendship. But maybe the time has come where I stop making that sacrifice to preserve something that no longer seems worth the effort."  
  
Clark could recall the feel of Lex's hand in his hair, promising help just after the bullet had ripped into him; he could remember his own bleakness when Lex, under Desiree's spell, had dismissed him from his life. He had never realized that words could cause more agony than that bullet had. "It is! Lex...you're my best friend. I don't know what I'd do without you."  
  
"Well you have a funny way of showing it." The icy distance had cooled the fire of Lex's anger, and made something in Clark ache. "All the times you've lied to me..."  
  
"You're not exactly a paragon of honesty yourself, Lex," Clark shot back. "Don't tell me you don't have secrets."  
  
Lex opened his mouth, then closed it, eyes narrowing. Something flickered across his face. "I've trusted you with the most important parts of myself," he finally said. "I don't think you can say the same."  
  
Clark was still reeling from that confession when the door to the office burst open at the hands of one of the bodyguards. "Mr. Luthor, Sheriff Adams is here," he said. "And she's asking about your friend here."  
  
Lex shot Clark a look and sighed. "This evening just gets better and better."  
  
Clark was on Lex's heels as they headed back to the entrance where Sheriff Adams stood, the red-and-blue flash of police lights visible through the opened door. She had her back to them as she spoke into her radio, but then she turned to face them, only to have her eyes go wide when they landed on Lex and Clark.  
  
Clark wondered what had surprised her but then he glanced down at himself and Lex. His shirt hung open, buttons gone, exposing a swath of skin from his neck to the waistband of his jeans. Lex, usually as precise in his appearance as he was in everything else, had the sleeves of his pale gray shirt pushed up to his elbows, its fine cloth rumpled and creased. He hadn't realized until that moment how undone they both looked.  
  
"Is there something I can help you with, Sheriff?" Lex asked, perfectly cool and courteous.  
  
"Well, well." Her eyes stayed steady on Clark. "The rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated."  
  
"What?"  
  
She glanced back at Lex. "Dispatch got a call that said Mr. Kent here had been murdered," she explained. "First, we tried the farm but his folks hadn't seen him, but his mother said he'd told her he planned to stop by and see you, Mr. Luthor, so here we are."  
  
"You can see that he has not been murdered," Lex said.   
  
"I can," she said, as she clicked at the radio on her shoulder. "All clear at the Luthor estate," she said into it. "Clark's fine. Somebody call the Kents and let them know their boy's alive."  
  
"Any idea why someone would make such a call?"   
  
The sheriff shook her head, but Clark wasn't interested in the question, let alone the answer. He knew what he had to do -- and that was stopping Van.   
  
As Sheriff Adams continued to speak with Lex, Clark edged around so that he was blocked from their sight by the door. In his head, Clark spared a silent apology to Lex for abandoning their earlier conversation.   
  
Once he was sure neither Adams nor Lex was watching him, he whipped into super-speed and out of the mansion, pausing to make use of the radio in the police car.  
  
"Van, I know you're listening. You didn't get me. If you want to finish this, meet me where I saw your dad's picture."  
  
**  
  
Lex wasn't surprised to find that Clark had vanished in the five seconds he'd taken his eyes off of him during his discussion with Sheriff Adams. Disappearing acts were one of Clark's many talents, right up there with telling lies badly and saving Lex's life. In fact, they were just one more step in the complicated dance they played to keep the status quo of their friendship intact. Lex would see something Clark refused to acknowledge, then Clark would disappear, time and distance like a reset button that quieted all the awkward questions between them.   
  
And Lex had went along with it for two years, two years of hoping through trust or subtle subterfuge that he'd find out the truth. But it had yet to happen and Lex was tired of playing a waiting game in which he cautiously hoped Clark would come to him on his own and be honest with him. He should've known better -- the only thing Clark did right when it came to telling lies was tell them consistently.   
  
The whole day had been much more taxing than Lex had realized because he had shared the shameful, sentimental truth that he had trusted Clark with everything important he had when Clark had trusted him with nothing. It wasn't something he had ever planned to admit, especially when he got nothing in return.   
  
Clark probably expected Lex to fall into the usual pattern where the disruption of their talk would signal its end and they would both pretend to forget everything they'd said. But Lex had also spoke the truth when he'd told Clark he no longer wanted to make that sacrifice. If they were to have a future past tomorrow, Clark would be the one sacrificing something on the altar of their friendship.  
  
The sun was just above the horizon when Lex pulled up to the Kent farm house, but he knew the family would be up and about, even on a Saturday. The backdoor was open, letting in the cool morning breeze, which smelled like the bread Mrs. Kent was obviously baking.  
  
He tapped on the screen door. "Can I come in?"  
  
Martha turned and smiled, a pan of muffins in her hand. "Of course, Lex. You're up early this morning."  
  
Lex offered her a polite smile as the door closed behind him. "Is Clark around?"  
  
"He should be in the barn," she said, carefully placing the pan on the counter. "Tell him that breakfast should be ready in half an hour or so."  
  
Lex excused himself and headed out across the sunlit property toward the old barn. It was a familiar path from the farm house to the barn, up the stairs to Clark's hideout. Clark was there, as his mother said, sprawled out in the hammock, eyes unseeingly focused on some timber in the barn's roof. There was a severity to the lines of his face that seemed out of place, both for Clark and a bright Saturday morning.  
  
"Your mother said you were up here."  
  
"Lex!" Clark scrambled to sit up, drawing his legs over the side of the hammock. "What are you doing here?"  
  
He spread his hands and shrugged. "I think that should be obvious. It's going to take more than a hasty departure to avoid finishing our conversation from last night."  
  
Clark looked guilty, which gave Lex a tiny thrill of satisfaction. "That's not why I left," he said. "Someone had to stop Van, and I --"  
  
Lex held up a gloved hand to stop his excuses. "I know, Clark. I'm well aware of your need to play hero. But that doesn't mean I'm going to let this drop."  
  
"I'm...not sure what you want me to say, Lex."  
  
Lex decided that an evasive answer was better than the usual lie. "I'd settle for the truth."  
  
Clark sighed. "It's not that simple. I wish it was."  
  
Another improvement. "Would it be easier if I go first?" Lex asked. "I'll go in reverse chronological order, start with the way you healed after I removed the meteor rock bullet from your shoulder and work my way back to how you survived the car crash that precipitated our first meeting."  
  
"I thought we were friends," Clark said.  
  
"I did, too."  
  
"But, what? If I don't tell you whatever it is you think I'm hiding, we're not anymore?"  
  
Lex hated it, but he could feel his determination wavering. The look on Clark's face -- frightened, hurt, angry, even a little betrayed -- was one he'd never wanted to see there, especially through his own actions. Despite all the frustrations between them, they were friends; Clark was probably the only real friend he'd ever had.  
  
Was the truth worth losing that? Sometimes -- like last night -- he thought so. But then sometimes...he'd thought Clark was dying the day before. It was not a feeling he wanted to relive any time soon.  
  
This time it was Lex who sighed. "No," he said softly. "Stuff of legend, remember?" He tried to smile at the reminder, but he couldn't quite manage it. "That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to know you trust me."  
  
Clark was suddenly there, his hand was heavy and warm on his shoulder. "I do trust you."   
  
"Of course you do." He had been trying for glib, but he missed by a mile, and tried another smile to hide his wince. "How could I think otherwise?"  
  
Lex didn't dare look back as he marched out of the barn, got into his car, and left the Kent Farm behind in a cloud of dust.  
  
**  
  
The echo of Lex's high-performance vehicle had long since faded by the time Clark actually regained his ability to move. His mind was caught on replay, going over and over what had been said, first last night and then that morning.  
  
"Clark! Breakfast!"  
  
As Clark joined his parents at the table for breakfast, he realized he hadn't told them anything of what had happened yesterday. By the time he'd gotten back to the farm after his confrontation with Van, he had been too tired for anything more than assuring them he was alive and well, and letting his mom hug the daylights out of him. He had risen with dawn, his mind a jumble, and he had retreated to his fortress of solitude.  
  
Then Lex had shown up.  
  
"Are you sure you're all right?" his mother asked, her perceptive eyes noticing the way he picked at his food.  
  
"I'm fine, Mom, but...there's some things I want to tell you and Dad, about last night."  
  
"What is it, son?" Jonathan asked, setting down his fork in favor of his coffee cup.  
  
"The reason Van thought he killed me was because he shot me...with kryptonite bullets."   
  
"What?" His father's question and his mother's gasp mingled.   
  
Clark reminded them of how Van had realized his weakness when Clark had stopped his attempt on Lex, and then hesitantly continued, telling them how when he'd stopped at the mansion to deliver the flowers from Trance's shop, Van had taken his chance.  
  
"How did you -- were you hurt?" Martha asked, her hand gripping his arm.   
  
"It was bad," Clark managed. "If I hadn't got the bullet out..."  
  
"How did you?" his father asked.  
  
"Lex." Clark reached for his orange juice to cover his desire to look away. "He pulled it out of me."  
  
"What?" It was amazing how much anger his father could pack into a single word.  
  
"He saved my life," he said.   
  
"He saw the effect that kryptonite has on you," Jonathan told him. "That's dangerous knowledge for a Luthor to have."  
  
"He saved my life," he repeated, glaring at his dad.   
  
"And we're grateful for that." As always, his mother was ready to play mediator. "But, honey, your dad is right. You've seen what comes of people knowing how to exploit you like that."  
  
"I know," Clark admitted. "But Lex is my friend and I trust him." It was the truth, but it was only part of a bigger truth, one that he knew his parents weren't going to like. Despite his reluctance earlier, Clark didn't want to lie to Lex, didn't want to keep so many secrets from him. And while he didn't believe in destiny the way Lex did, Clark couldn't help but wonder if this wasn't some sign that maybe it was time to trust his own instinct in lieu of his father's.  
  
His parents shared a look, some silent conversation going on between with them. Clark wondered if someone would ever know him well enough to read his mind with a glance. "We know that, sweetheart," his mother finally said. "But it's not as simple as trusting or not trusting Lex."  
  
His father was silent and probably had memories of Roger Nixon dancing in his head.  
  
"Do you know how hard it is to lie to him all the time?" he asked them. "It's bad enough with Lana and Chloe, but Lex...he knows I'm hiding something. He knows I lie to him all the time, has since the beginning. It's amazing he still even wants to be my friend."  
  
"You're not a dishonest person, Clark, you're just..."  
  
"A habitual liar?"   
  
His father sighed. "It's a fact of your life, like your abilities. You can't trust just anyone with your secrets."  
  
Clark wanted to tell his father it wasn't just anyone he wanted to tell, it was Lex, but he couldn't force the words past his throat. Part of him worried that it was too soon after the summer for his family to be faced with something like this, while another part said the same was true for him and Lex. The conflict between those two parts kept Clark silent, caught somewhere between anger and sadness and resentment.   
  
The tension didn't ease until Jonathan pushed back from the table and stood up, mumbling about chores. Clark and Martha watched in silence as he stalked out of the backdoor, the screen door banging shut behind him.  
  
He felt his mother's hand on his and took the comfort she offered. "I told you once that you would have to carry the burden of your gifts on your own," she said softly. "In the end, it's your life and your secret. But it affects all of us, your decisions. Just remember that, okay?"  
  
It was the closest he would ever get to permission, Clark realized as his mother quietly began to clear away three plates of uneaten breakfast, and it wasn't even really permission. It was a warning wrapped up in resignation; she knew that they couldn't stop him if his mind were truly made up, but she wanted him to be sure before he did.  
  
So far, everyone Clark had trusted with his secret had been done without thought, just a gut reaction to the circumstances around him or an inadvertent slip in the heat of a fight. He didn't want to regret whatever decision he made about Lex because, for some reason, he knew it mattered more.  
  
Lex mattered more.  
  
Whatever happened next, Clark knew he had to be sure, for everyone's sakes.  
  
**  
  
Since his return to Smallville, Lex had only been vaguely aware of Trance Gemini and only because of her unlikely comraderie with Clark. Given a fraction of what he thought Clark was hiding from him, it didn't feel like paranoia to be concerned when a mysterious new resident in town showed an unusual amount of interest in a shy teenager.  
  
His suspicions had been aroused further when it was a delivery from her shop that had put Clark in the crosshairs for McNulty's meteor rock bullet.  
  
The few times Lex had been inside Nell's shop, it had been dim and refrigerator-cool, but Trance's shop was bright and humid, as if she had tried to recreate the tropical environment to which many of her plants were native. Lex didn't recognize all of the vegetation on display, but he knew enough of them to know they came from far-off exotic locales, some even he hadn't visited.  
  
"Mr. Luthor," Trance said, setting aside her watering can. "This is a surprise. How can I help you?"  
  
Lex laid the blank card from the arrangement on the counter between them. "I have a few questions about a delivery I received yesterday."  
  
"So Clark got it out to you?" she asked pleasantly, her elbows propped against the countertop.   
  
"He did," Lex said. "But the card was blank. I was wondering if there had been some mistake."  
  
"No mistake," she said. "They were for you."  
  
"Any way I can find out who was behind such a thoughtful gesture?" he asked.  
  
She only smiled a little wider. "Who am I to ruin someone's act of anonymous kindness?"   
  
Lex narrowed his eyes at the self-satisfied expression on her face. Clark might've been fooled by the too-innocent innocence in her eyes, but Lex had known enough tricksters in his time to resist the con.  
  
"What I find interesting, Ms. Gemini, is that Clark's unexpected stop to deliver this Samartian's gift put him right where Van McNulty could find him." Lex's voice was pitched low, a mildly threatening rumble. He noticed a minute shift in Trance's expression, perhaps startlement. "That seems rather...coincidental, doesn't it?"  
  
"I don't like what you're implying," she said. "Clark is my friend,"   
  
"Friends don't always have our best interests at heart," Lex told her.   
  
Trance's eyes watched his face intently. "You sound like you know a lot about that."  
  
Lex tried to ignore the stab of that uncomfortable truth. "Clark is my friend, too. I don't like the thought of someone deliberately putting him in harm's way."  
  
"Van would have found Clark somewhere else if it hadn't been at your home," Trance said. "I'm not to blame for his actions."   
  
"That might be true," Lex conceded. "But I meant what I said about Clark."  
  
There was a hint of a smile when she answered. "I know."  
  
"Good day, Ms. Gemini."  
  
Just before the door closed behind him, he heard Trance's last statement. "You have to admit it was lucky that you were there, wasn't it?"  
  
Even after he left the flower shop, Lex didn't head straight back to the mansion. Instead, he drove the country roads like the maniac Jonathan Kent had once accused him of being. When the thrill of taking curves at breakneck speed worn thin, he finally went home, craving alcohol and solitude.  
  
What he got was a bodyguard with a message. "Clark Kent is waiting for you in your office," the man explained. "He's been for over an hour and he, ah, declined our suggestion that he come back later."  
  
Lex tried to ignore his quickened pulse at the news. "It's all right. I'll see to him in a minute."  
  
He shed his gloves and his coat somewhere between the garage and his office, little displays of routine to delay the confrontation ahead of him. In his office, he found Clark sitting near the fireplace, nervousness in his gestures. He looked much as he had that morning, old jeans and bright blue T-shirt, jacket thrown across the cushion behind him.  
  
"Clark."  
  
He looked up and smiled, a little hesitant at one corner of his mouth. "Lex, I, uh, waited for you. I hope you don't mind."  
  
"Of course not. I'm glad you felt you could."  
  
"I was worried I wouldn't be able to," Clark admitted.   
  
In the silence that followed, Lex busied himself with pouring himself a glass of scotch while Clark stared at the flames flickering in the fireplace.  
  
"I've been thinking about what you said last night and this morning," Clark said, looking at his hands instead of Lex as he spoke.   
  
"Don't worry about it," Lex said. He took a sip of his drink and sat down across from his guest. "I let my curiosity get the better of me yesterday and I apologize for that. Answers are not worth the loss of this friendship."  
  
"Lex." The smile wasn't as hesitant as it had been a moment before and Lex couldn't explain why that made breathing easier, but it did. "I appreciate that but...that won't make it go away."  
  
"No," he agreed. "It won't."  
  
"We both know that I have secrets," Clark told him. "That's probably the only thing that's not one."  
  
Lex suppressed a smile at the understatement.  
  
Clark's hands clenched and unclenched where they lay in his lap. "I do want to tell you because I do trust you. I'm just not sure where to start."  
  
"Clark," Lex warned. "Don't say anything you'll regret."  
  
"I'm not," he said. "I won't." Clark took a deep breath and caught Lex's eyes with his own. He almost flinched from all the sincerity looking back at him from Clark's green eyes. "Go ahead. Ask me whatever it is you want to know."  
  
Lex wondered if Clark even understood the rush he had to control, the selfish desire to lay it all bare with that kind of invitation. But he had been sincere when he'd said the fulfillment of his curiosity wasn't worth losing Clark. Some days, Lex felt like their friendship was all that kept him from succombing to the darkness he had inherited from his father.  
  
Showing a restraint he didn't feel, Lex settled back in his chair and thought about how to proceed. Finally, he asked, his voice low and soft. "Did I hit you with my car?"  
  
Clark nodded, swallowing. "Yeah."  
  
"Can you read the writing on the cave walls?"  
  
Clark started, as if he hadn't expected that question. "Yeah."  
  
Lex wanted to follow that line but he stopped himself. "Are you as strong as I suspect you are?"  
  
Clark looked down at his hands. "Probably stronger."  
  
Something else he wanted to explore -- eventually.   
  
"Why meteor rock bullets?"  
  
Clark's eyelids fluttered, not quite a blink. "I'm allergic to them."   
  
Lex reached out and laid a hand on Clark's arm, feeling the tense muscles move under his fingers. "I think that's enough for now. Much more honesty might be too great a shock to my system."  
  
The smile was slow in coming, but when Clark finally managed it, it was blinding and it outshone even the most curious corners of Lex's dark mind.


	3. Chapter 3

After that first tentative revelation, Clark had expected all his secrets to come pouring out at Lex's command, one after another until there was none left between them. Instead, they were brought to light slowly, in the quiet moments of their companionship that, before, had been awkward with their burden.  
  
Lex surprised him with his patience, but it was good surprise. It was also completely different from when he'd told Pete, but good in its difference, too. Lex seemed to content to go slowly, to give Clark time to adjust, to not regret his decision to share everything with his friend.  
  
But sometimes Lex couldn't help himself, and a question would come, in the middle of whatever mundane thing they were doing, conjuring up specters of the past and old half-truths. The questions were never the big ones that Clark still dreaded -- like "What are you?" -- but the small mysteries that had driven Lex crazy behind whatever feeble lie Clark had tried to tell.  
  
One night, over chess, he confessed his x-ray vision as Lex remembered the bug Clark had "intuited" in the stereo, and the confidence with which Clark had once expressed his ability to find needles in haystacks. His speed made itself known on another occasion, an accidental display when he saved a tumbling decanter of expensive liquor that he'd almost sent splintering to the floor.   
  
Lex didn't ask any questions then, but Clark could see them in his eyes, see the way he tried to pretend it didn't set his scientific curiosity ablaze.   
  
He did ask questions one afternoon as he loitered in the kitchen, watching Clark effortlessly carry in the crates of produce he had ordered.   
  
"I hit you with my car, and you survived," he said.  
  
Clark nodded, head bent over the form his mother had filled out with the details of Lex's order. When he looked up, Lex was staring at him with an unreadable look in his eyes. "What about it?"  
  
"I've seen you hurt before," Lex pointed out. "I've seen you bleed."  
  
"Meteor rocks," Clark reminded him.  
  
Lex shook his head. "But your ribs, that time..." Clark jumped a little at the unfamiliar feeling of Lex's hand on his side, incredibly warm through the fabric of his T-shirt. Lex pulled his hand away immediately and cleared his throat. "There weren't any meteor rocks involved."  
  
He remembered their argument from when Eric had taken his powers, a disagreement born of his secrets and Lex's curiosity, the very things that held them together that moment. "There have been times when everything has equaled out on me temporarily."  
  
"But the meteor rocks didn't make you this way." It was a statement but there was a question hidden in it, the same one Lex had asked when they had started this journey of truth. Clark thought it might have been a test, or even a reprieve, a chance to be honest on this if he hadn't been before  
  
Clark leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms, making sure Lex could see the sincerity in his eyes. "The only thing the meteor rocks do is make me very, very sick. They don't have anything to do with what I can do."  
  
Lex watched him for another moment, then nodded. "Okay."  
  
For some reason, it felt like another breakthrough and Clark grinned. Lex answered with a smile of his own, and asked if Clark wanted to stay.  
  
"Can't," Clark said apologetically. "I have this huge Japanese History test to study for. It counts for half of my grade."  
  
"I'd offer you my help, but I'm afraid my knowledge of Japanese history is based primarily on what I've learned from old samurai films."  
  
Later, Clark fell into a thirty-six hour sleep thanks to Sara Conroy's wandering consciousness, and his dreams danced through a slideshow of his desires and fears. First, he was swimming in the cool waters of the lake, a vague feeling that he was waiting for someone in the back of his mind, until he heard Sarah's scream. Then he was at home, surprised by the gift of the new truck, only to fall into the academic nightmare of missing the all-important history exam.   
  
And he dreamed of Lex, who showed Clark his prized samurai sword, only to unsheathe it to reveal a blade with a sickly familiar green glow. With one of those strange little smiles that always confused Clark, Lex stepped forward and plunged the sword into Clark's stomach. It sank into his skin like Van's bullet had ripped through him, and he felt his life drain away as Lex whispered, "Did you really think it wouldn't matter that you're not even human?"  
  
Luckily, Sara appeared in that moment and screamed, and they were suddenly at his house, no sword in his gut, the air heavy with lilacs. After the Traveler had appeared and Clark had finally pulled himself awake, it was that scene with Lex that had replayed itself in his mind, had worried at him the most. It was the closest he'd come to admitting to himself that there still existed a gulf of secrets between him and Lex.  
  
Sometime in the middle of his investigation into Sara's uncle, he finally worked up the courage to see Lex, who had been worried about him during his three-day slumber, if his mother was to be believed about the number of times Lex had called.   
  
The obvious relief on his friend's face soothed away any edges of regret.  
  
"Is this one of your usual abilities?" Lex asked after Clark had explained the situation, incongruously disturbed by the tale. "You can just...walk into people's heads?"  
  
"What? No!" Clark answered. "Lex, I'm not in her head, she's in mine. And I want her out as soon as possible."  
  
Lex seemed to relax at his answer. "I can understand why. Dreams are...personal."  
  
"So you wouldn't want someone getting into yours, huh?" Clark asked.  
  
"Not if I can help it," Lex told him. "But sometimes, you can't. Like with you and your dream girl."  
  
Clark thanked Lex for the information he'd supplied him from Sara's Metropolis doctors and sent a few wary glances toward the prop sword on the wall before he headed over to the Lana's old house to check out Sara's uncle. Everything snowballed from there, until he was sweeping a lighter out of Nicholas Conroy's hand to save Lana from a fiery death.  
  
"How was Sara?" his mother asked as Clark walked in the door.   
  
"She was good," he said, recalling the strange conversation he'd had with her, the first one they'd ever had while awake. She had made some vague remarks about his powers, about how life was too short to let fears rule over one's decisions. For some reason, it made him think of Lex. "I think she's going to be okay, now that Nicholas is behind bars."  
  
Martha nodded, then pointed toward the phone. "You had a few calls while you were out."  
  
"Yeah?"   
  
"Yes," she said. "Most of them are from Lex."  
  
Clark smiled a little. "Really? I guess I should call him back."  
  
"Clark..." His mother's hesitant voice made him pause in his grab for the phone. "You never said, but...did you tell him? Lex, about your secrets?"  
  
"Mom." Clark sat back down with a sigh.   
  
"I know I said it was your decision and it is, I just wanted to know."  
  
"I didn't tell him exactly, but I made a decision not to lie to him anymore." Clark traced idle patterns on the tabletop to avoid his mother's gaze. "I've really just confirmed what he suspected -- the strength, the speed, x-ray vision. He knew about the kryptonite from the bullet. I...I haven't told him I'm -- not from around here, but he knows I'm not a meteor mutant. Eventually, he's going to ask, and I'm..."  
  
"You're going to tell him the truth." Martha's voice was soft and difficult to read.  
  
"Yeah, I am." Clark dared a glance at her strangely calm face. "I'm sorry."  
  
"Oh, Clark." He felt his mother's arms come around him. "There's nothing to be sorry for. I just hope it's always that way."  
  
He didn't know what to say, so he just returned her hug, hoping it communicated his gratitude and love.  
  
She finally let go and gestured to the phone again. "If you're going to call Lex back, you had better do it soon. You need to get some rest and start studying for your make-up exam."  
  
His mother was gone by the time Lex actually answered the phone. "How's the girl of your dreams?" he asked, and Clark could hear the amusement in his voice.  
  
"Awake, thankfully," Clark answered, settling in his chair again. "And gone. My dreams are my own again."  
  
"I have to admit I'm intrigued by what she might've seen in there," Lex said.   
  
"What was that you said about dreams being personal, Lex?"  
  
"Doesn't mean I'm not curious," he said. "There's still so much about you I haven't figured out. I have to wonder if a trip through your subconscious would be illuminating."  
  
Clark thought about his dream, and about what Sara had said. "All you have to do is ask."  
  
There was a pause. "I know, and that means a great deal." Lex cleared his throat. "Good night, Clark, and good luck on that history exam."  
  
As much as he wanted to ease the strange edge of Lex's voice when he talked about his secrets, Clark had to admit he was relieved when the call ended without any more questions.  
  
But he'd meant what he'd told his mother. When Lex asked, he would tell him the truth.  
  
**  
  
This therapy sessions with Dr. Foster were as just excruciating as Lex had imagined they would be when he had agreed to LutherCorp's demand. The first meeting was mainly spent listening to the doctor talk -- setting expectations, sharing her various philosophies -- but their first actual session was a battle of wills, as she tried to get him to talk about his father through a series of subtly rephrased questions. When she left after an hour, obviously frustrated, Lex considered it a victory, no matter how petty.  
  
It was after that second visit to the mansion that Clark passed Dr. Foster on her way out.  
  
"Who was that?" he asked, as he came in, dropping his backpack on a convenient flat surface -- this time, the pool table.  
  
"I assume you mean Dr. Foster?"  
  
"Doctor?" The evident concern on Clark's face was heartwarming. "Is there something wrong?"  
  
"Nothing at all," Lex assured him. "The good Dr. Foster is, what we call in the modern vernacular, a shrink."  
  
"A shrink? I thought you said you didn't want someone getting in your head."  
  
"Unless it's necessary," Lex said. "And, unfortunately, it's become necessary."  
  
Although Lex would've thought it was impossible, but Clark looked even more concerned. "Necessary? Oh, Lex, I'm sorry. I didn't even think..."  
  
"For insurance, Clark." Lex couldn't stop the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "The insurance company is asking that I complete a psych evaluation before they sign off on me, given the harrowing events of the summer."  
  
"Oh." Understanding dawned on his face, followed by a flush that started under his collar and reached the tip of his ears. "Sorry, I thought -- well, you know."  
  
"I know," Lex said, still smiling at Clark's embarrassment. "And while your concern is touching, I'm not losing my mind."  
  
Clark finally settled next to Lex, his face still serious with the vestige of his worry. It was one of those moments when Lex was _struck_ by Clark, by the lines of his face, the shape and color of his eyes, by the changes he could see since they had first met. "Lex, you know if you need to talk about anything, I'm here, right?"  
  
"I think I might've had an inkling," Lex teased before he sobered. "From what I understand, you had an interesting summer yourself. I hope you know the same offer stands for you."  
  
He flinched as if the reminder of that summer hurt physically, but then he smiled at Lex. "Thanks, Lex. But how about we just change the subject from this summer, for both of us?"  
  
Lex was as eager as Clark to leave the subject of the summer behind them. In fact, it took every bit of goodness he doubted he possessed not to use Clark to distract himself from his own problems, not to delve more deeply into the mysteries of his friend that had fascinated him for so long. Clark would probably let him, too. He'd probably sit there and answer every question Lex had, even knowing why.   
  
But Lex knew he would regret it as soon as he had, so he stopped himself. He wanted to take his time unlayering the secrets that had blurred his friendship with Clark. So far, he had treated it like what it was -- a seduction, slow precise steps toward the final triumph. Every time Clark answered, he trusted him a little more and it eased the discordant notes of hurt that sometimes bothered him; every time he withheld a question he desperately wanted to ask, Lex trusted himself more, felt more worthy of the trust Clark had put in him. He wanted to make sure there were no proverbial morning after regrets when they reached the end of the truth-telling line.  
  
Lex came out of his reverie to find that Clark was still smiling at him, just waiting for a reply, and he realized he didn't even need the sweet allure of secret-cracking to find Clark fascinating enough to distract him from his problems.  
  
During his second session with Dr. Foster, Lex lost his patience after she continued her line of inquiry from their first appointment.  
  
"Doctor, I don't really understand what you're trying to accomplish with these endless questions about my father."  
  
"Surely, you don't deny that your father has had a significant impact on your life."  
  
"Of course not. But from this incessant line of questioning, I assume that you think he's the only significant impact in my life, which I assure you is not the case."  
  
"Does that mean you're ready to talk about your ex-wife?" Dr. Foster asked.  
  
"Your focus on the negative seems almost...pathological, Doctor," Lex said, watching with satisfaction as annoyance and frustration chased over his companion's face. "Maybe you should talk about it with someone?"  
  
"Fine, Lex," she said, determination in every syllable. She even squared her shoulders. "Let's discuss some of the other influences on your current state of mind. You've ruled out your father, and your ex-wife, I guess that leaves friends? I think I passed one of them on my way out last night. Tall, dark hair, dressed in flannel?"  
  
Lex suddenly lost his glow of smug satisfaction. If there were anything more dangerous than his father to discuss with the good doctor, it was Clark. "I think the term you're searching for is 'delivery boy.'"  
  
"Delivery boys don't tend to walk in through the front door empty-handed," she said. "Nor are they usually treated so solicitously by the staff. I believe his name might be...Clark?"  
  
He leaned forward, his best menacing impression of his father. "Just who has been feeding you information about my life, Dr. Foster?"   
  
She shook her head. "Do you know how paranoid you sound? I'm sure it hasn't escaped your attention that you're a celebrity, and information about your life isn't that difficult to come by. Did you really think I'd come in here to help you without being prepared? Or that I wouldn't know about the boy who saved you from that car crash a few years ago?"  
  
"I'm not here to talk about Clark."  
  
Dr. Foster sighed. "Then what do you want to talk about?"  
  
Lex knew his smile was ugly, but he couldn't keep it off his face. "The weather is nice out today, isn't it?"  
  
In the end, he conceded that session was a draw.  
  
After their third hour together a week later, Lex needed more than her absence to shake the feeling of captivity her visits caused, which was why he left the mansion almost as soon as the doctor had. His original thought was a long, fast drive to clear his head but, as he turned down the lane that would only take him to the Kent farm, he had to admit that maybe he had known his destination all along.  
  
"Lex," Mrs. Kent said in greeting when she noticed him at the door. "Come in."  
  
Lex was used to arriving at the Kent Farm to find Clark's mother doing some kind of domestic chore -- cooking, cleaning, gardening -- but today she had papers spread across the kitchen table and an accountant's calculator spitting out a thread of figures. "End of the month?" he asked in sympathy.  
  
"And we're nearing the end of the quarter," she smiled. "I'm sure you know the feeling."  
  
"Intimately," he agreed.   
  
Mrs. Kent looked as if she wanted to say something else, but a shadow crossed her face, one Lex couldn't read. After two years, he had thought he was well-versed in the facial expressions of Martha and Jonathan Kent, but this one was new.  
  
She looked as if she were going to say something, but then the loud, bright sounds of her son coming down the stairs ended any chance either of them had to speak.  
  
"Mom, do you have anything else that needs..." Clark broke off when he saw Lex. "Hey, what are you doing here?"  
  
"I needed to get out of the mansion," he said truthfully. "If you're not too busy, I was hoping you'd like some company."  
  
"Yeah, of course." Clark only paused when he realized his arms were still full of muddy clothes. "Mom, would you...?"  
  
Mrs. Kent took the offered laundry without comment. "It was good to see you, Lex," she said before disappearing outside with the dirty clothes.   
  
Lex turned back to his friend and noticed that Clark's hair was wet, hanging in damp curls that still clung to his rosy-scrubbed skin. "Why do I feel there's a story in those clothes?"  
  
Clark rolled his eyes as he joined Lex at the table. "It's a farm, things happen."  
  
"And why do I now feel even more strongly that there's a story there?"  
  
Clark grinned, but refused to elaborate. "Why did you need to get out of the mansion? Your dad's not there is he?"  
  
"God, no," Lex said quickly. "Even though we are trying to repair our damaged relationship, I think seeing the man several times a week at LutherCorp is enough."  
  
"Then...?"  
  
"I have recently completed my third mandatory hour of therapy."  
  
"Oh." He rose from the table to snag a soda from the refrigerator. Lex declined the proffered drink. "You're almost done, though, right?"  
  
"Two more sessions to go, but each one is worse than the last." Lex cast a glance over his shoulder in the direction that Mrs. Kent had disappeared. "Is something up with your mom? She seemed a little off."  
  
Clark's head was down as if he were fascinated by the condensation on his soda can, but he flicked his eyes toward Lex before he answered. "She knows about our new policy of honesty."  
  
Suddenly that unreadable look made sense. "Should I be on the lookout for Jonathan Kent's shotgun?"  
  
Clark smiled at that. "No. One, he's in Grandville today. Two, he doesn't know. It was just easier that way."  
  
"I never understood why you didn't tell me in the first place," Lex admitted, ignoring the hurt he still felt over it. He blamed his sudden desire for confession on the hour spent in Dr. Foster's wound-opening company. "Maybe not the moment we met but…it's taken you years _and_ the fact that I finally saw something even you couldn't try to lie away."  
  
"You say that like you aren't always hiding things from me." Clark looked torn between guilt and annoyance.  
  
Lex thought about the room in the mansion with every clue he had to the mysteries around him. "It's usually for your own protection."  
  
He shrugged. "The point is, I was scared. At first, it was because I didn't know if I could trust you. But then, once I felt like I could, you made it clear that you wouldn't trust me again if you found out and it was just easier to keep quiet."  
  
"I did?"  
  
"Don't you remember what you said, sitting right here? Back when your dad was blind?" Clark asked. When Lex shook his head, Clark continued. "You said you couldn't trust someone after you'd known they had lied to you before."  
  
"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you," Lex said. At Clark's troubled expression, he explained. "That's not me, that's Nietzsche. But I have found that his viewpoint in applicable in my own life."  
  
"Well, that's mostly why."  
  
"Mostly?"  
  
Clark took a long drink from his soda. "Talking about that kind of stuff isn't easy, Lex."  
  
"If only Doctor Foster realized that," Lex told him. "I don't know what people even get out of this whole therapy concept. If I wanted to bare my soul, my first choice wouldn't be to a complete stranger."  
  
"It helps some people," Clark said. "My mom saw somebody a few times after...she lost the baby. I think she needed someone she could talk to without worrying about their feelings too, like she would with my dad."  
  
"Unfortunately, nothing can change the fact that I'm doing this against my will," Lex said. "And I've rarely gotten anything worthwhile out of something I'm coerced into doing."  
  
Clark was looking at him, almost as if he could see through all the cynical excuses he gave about his aversion to therapy and down to the truth underneath, down to the fears and anxieties he suspected were just waiting to consume him if they gave them voice. Clark's eyes met his, and his face was sympathetic, if subdued. "I wish I could help."  
  
Lex held his gaze. "You do, Clark. You do."  
  
It was the most truthful thing he had said all day.


	4. Chapter 4

With so many changes in his life, there was one thing that was comfortingly constant: Clark always looked forward to days spent with his parents at the local farmer's market. Given that most of his family's closest friends were farmers as well, they were as important socially as they were financially.  
  
Once Clark had done most of the heavy lifting for the stall's set-up, his mom let him wander off to look around at the booths, manned by grocers and artisans, crafters and merchants. Standing off by herself, near a group of young Kawatche men selling beautiful hand-made drums, he spotted a familiar figure.   
  
"Trance!"  
  
She was looking not at the drums, but out across the entire market, her face turned up to the warmth of the afternoon sun. Even with her bright purple shirt and her wildly-pinned blond hair, she looked unusually serious, her eyes focused on some distant point even Clark couldn't identify.   
  
"Clark," she said, smiling as she always did when they met.   
  
"Something on your mind?" he asked, letting a little concern seep into his voice.  
  
She shook her head. "Just thinking."  
  
"About what?"  
  
She closed her eyes for a moment, head tilted back. "Well, the sun. Do you ever think about the sun?"  
  
"No?" Clark answered.  
  
"Exactly," Trance said with satisfaction, slowly making her way down the row of stands. Clark followed after her. "For thousands of years, the sun was worshipped as a god all over Earth. But most people don't even think about it anymore. They don't think about everything that the sun does for them." She turned to look Clark straight in the eye. "I bet we don't even know all the ways the sun affects us. What do you think?"  
  
"I...can't say I've ever thought about it," he admitted. They slowed near the Kents' stand where, among the fruits and vegetables and baked goods, Martha had several bunches of her prized flowers.   
  
Trance lingered there, ghosting a finger down the curve of a sunflower. "Plants -- they're about the last sun worshippers on the planet. And the first, too. There are dozens of myths about lonely lovers turned into flowers like this one so they could spend eternity watching Apollo on his journeys across the sky."  
  
"Apollo?" Mythology was rarely something Clark had a reason to discuss outside of history class.  
  
"The Greek god of the sun and prophecy." Her attention trailed toward a display of white tulips. "Do you believe? In prophecy, I mean. Predictions, foresight. Premonitions."  
  
"Not really."  
  
Trance gave him a teasing look of her own, hazel eyes from beneath pale lashes. "How about destiny?"  
  
Clark felt something clutch in his chest. "I don't want to," he said seriously. "Why?"  
  
She shrugged and looked up at the sky again. "Just a feeling I have. I think we might be in for a strange few days." Trance grinned devilishly as she caught his eyes again. "But, then again, this is Smallville."  
  
The sound of their humor caught his mother's attention, and Martha graced them with a polite smile, her eyes full of her curiosity about Trance. Clark quickly introduced them and watched as the women fell into conversation about flowers and potting soils and cutting techniques. His attention wandered away, scanning the growing crowds until his eyes found another familiar figure in the throng of people, one even more distinctive than Trance with her crazy hair and New Age fashion sense.   
  
Lex.  
  
As if he could feel the weight of Clark's gaze, he turned and noticed him. There was that familiar quick quirk of his mouth and then Lex was moving purposefully toward the Kent stand.  
  
"Well, well," Clark heard Trance murmur at his side, and he glanced at her to see a little grin twist her lips from behind the petals of the flower she held.   
  
Lex shot Clark another warm look while he greeted Martha and Jonathan, made all the usual small talk. Then he noticed Trance, and his face seemed to shutter. "Ms. Gemini."  
  
"Mr. Luthor," she returned, gently teasing with the way she drew out the "o" sound. "Nice to see you again."  
  
"You, too."  
  
"Thanks for the flower, Mrs. Kent," Trance said as she squeezed by Lex, away from the stand and into the crowds. "I'll see you around, Clark," she added and, with a little wave of her prize, she almost skipped away, melting into the people milling around the market.  
  
Clark wondered about the frown on Lex's face as he watched Trance disappear, but his friend waved away his concerns when he asked, and Clark didn't really want to waste time with questions anyway. Lex had a look about him that said he had come to be amused by the trivial pleasures of the farmer's market and Clark was prepared to help him do just that.  
  
He didn't think about his conversation with Trance again until a few days later when news broke that the sun had taken a hit from a comet to create the largest solar flare ever recorded. It was disturbingly timely, her talk of the sun and of a premonition about a strange few days, and part of Clark couldn't help but be suspicious. But another part reminded him that just because he lived Smallville didn't mean that coincidences didn't actually happen.   
  
Clark had planned to chat with her about it on his way to meet Pete for their study session about the solar flare -- before he was sidetracked by Perry White and the personal power glitches that had followed.   
  
With nothing else to do on the bus ride from Colorado Springs back to Smallville, Clark allowed himself to reflect on everything that had happened since that summer. He hadn't spent much time thinking about any of it, the summer or the time after. As Kal, he had been about denying, not analyzing, his feelings; once he'd returned home, Clark had been too bent on making amends to think about much else.   
  
Clark was surprised to realize how far Lana had faded from both his life and his thoughts. It wasn't that he didn't still care about her, or even spend time with her, or that he hadn't felt guilty when he'd inadvertently helped Perry corner her at the Talon; all of those things were still true. But somewhere along the way, those feelings had faded to a sweet background noise instead of the gut-wrenching ache it had once been. He remembered what how it had felt to kiss her, to hold her in his arms those few times before he had disappeared into the haze of red kryptonite, but they were memory only -- he could no longer dredge them up firsthand, nor could he quite recapture the way she had made him burn when he'd come into his heat vision.  
  
Clark wasn't sure when the shift had happened but what he felt for Lana was more like what he felt for Chloe, spiced by the bittersweetness of what might have been if that summer hadn't happened. But it was nothing more.  
  
That summer -- Clark wished he remembered less of it, but he wasn't that lucky. Every moment was crystal-clear, easy to recall: every crime he'd committed, every fight he'd won, every girl he'd tried to lose himself in. He even remembered the desperate moments when he'd forced himself to take off the ring, only to be so consumed by his pain and guilt that the ring had still felt like the lesser of two evils.   
  
But some of Clark's pain had plagued Kal, whether he had wanted it or not. Lex's disappearance and then the declaration of his death -- even Kal had suffered from that loss. It had driven him to Lex's funeral, to be even crueler to Chloe when she'd showed up at his apartment afterward. Grief had even made Kal reckless enough to consider paying a visit to Lionel Luthor long before Morgan Edge had hired him, when it had crossed his mind that maybe Lex's death hadn't been as accidental as the papers said.   
  
Lex was another person whose place in Clark's universe had undergone change. But where Lana had become less, everything he felt for Lex had become more. Clark wasn't even sure why exactly, but he had two good guesses. He'd spent a summer mourning Lex's death, and then had shared with him more than he'd ever shared with anyone else. Even Pete, his friend since grade school, who knew the whole complete truth about his origins wasn't as close to him as he felt to Lex. No one made him feel like Lex did and that bond had done nothing but intensify over the last few months. He didn't know if it was the same for Lex but sometimes he thought it was, when Lex would look at him a certain way that would flood him with warmth that pooled in his stomach and flushed his skin.  
  
Sometimes, in the most honest corners of his mind, Clark thought he had a word for it, but he had yet to convince himself to look too closely and name that feeling; all he knew was that he liked it and wanted to keep having it, and only Lex brought it out of him.  
  
Clark wasn't sure how late it was when the bus dropped him at the Smallville bus stop, but he was grateful to see his dad waiting for him, almost as grateful as he had been when he'd had enough money for the fare home. Jonathan looked as tired as he felt as they drove home in near-silence and Clark couldn't help the guilt he felt at causing his parents even more problems with his freaky alien-ness.  
  
When he tried to apologize, his dad brushed it off with an affectionate squeeze to the back of his neck. "It's not your fault, Clark," he told him. "You aren't to blame for the solar flare and next time we'll be prepared."  
  
"But I'm so much trouble."  
  
"Your mom and I love you," his dad reminded him. "We wouldn't have you be anyone but who you are, trouble and all."  
  
Clark was still aglow with his father's reassurance when the truck rolled up to the farm house, only to find an expensive sports car in their path.   
  
"What's Lex doing here?" Clark said, slamming the truck door behind him.  
  
Jonathan was frowning. "I don't know."  
  
They entered the kitchen to find Lex and Martha seated at the kitchen table, each with a coffee mug in front of them. They both turned toward the door at the sound of their arrival, but Lex was the only one of the two who jumped to his feet.  
  
"Clark," he said. "Are you all right?"  
  
"I, um..." Clark wasn't sure how to answer, especially with both of his parents in the room. He shot them wary glances while he tried to come up with an answer.  
  
His mother rescued him. "I explained to Lex that you and Pete were stranded on your way to Grandville," she said. "I told him I wasn't sure when your bus would be back, but he wanted to wait."  
  
Clark and his dad both relaxed with the lie firmly in place. Clark figured Lex would recognize the lie and demand the truth later when the Kents weren't around. "I'm fine," he told his friend. "A little tired, but okay." He sat heavily in a kitchen chair to illustrate the point.  
  
"It's probably a good thing you were gone all day," Lex told him, retaking his seat. Martha remained where she had been, but Jonathan hovered, loitering at the counter under the guise of pouring himself a cup of coffee. Lex looked at each of them in turn. "Perry White came to see me today. He wanted information about Clark."  
  
"Ugh." Clark let his head drop to the table. "Will he not give up?"  
  
"So I take it this isn't the first you've heard of it?" Lex asked.  
  
Jonathan and Martha exchanged a look before his mother answered Lex. "No," she said. "He was asking Chloe questions about Clark, too."  
  
"What did you tell him?" Jonathan wanted to know, his voice more icy than it had been toward Lex since his ill-fated marriage to Helen.  
  
"Nothing," Lex said. "This isn't my first encounter with the likes of White. I told him what I told him when I was sixteen -- go to hell." Lex broke the staring contest he was having with Jonathan to hold Clark's gaze. Clark saw something vulnerable in those gray-blue eyes, something that looked like real concern. Lex's hand closest to him moved toward him but then stopped and fell back to the table. "I wanted you to be aware."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
Lex broke the eye contact and cleared his throat, rising to his feet. "It's late," he said. "I just wanted...well, I wanted you to know."  
  
"We appreciate it, Lex," Martha said. "Goodnight."  
  
"I'll walk him out," Clark said quickly, jumping up to follow Lex's smooth stride out of the back door. "Be right back."  
  
Lex must've known Clark would follow because he was leaning against his shiny car, waiting for him. Once Clark was close enough for them to speak in low tones that Clark's parents couldn't overhear from the kitchen, Lex asked, "Stranded on your way to Grandville? Really? I hope I'm not supposed to believe that."  
  
"No," Clark said. "But later. There's no way I can tell you anything with my parents around."  
  
Lex nodded his acceptance. "You need to watch yourself around White, Clark," he continued, that same frightening concern in his eyes. "He's an asshole, but he's good at what he does. You don't want him snooping around."  
  
"Tell me about it," Clark sighed.  
  
"I tried to dissuade his interest," he said. "But I'm not sure how much it helped."  
  
"At least he's not bothering Lana," Clark tried to joke.  
  
Lex climbed into his car, but leaned out of open window to answer. "I doubt Lana has what you have to hide." Clark stepped back from the vehicle to give Lex room to leave, but Lex had one more thing to say. "Be careful, Clark."  
  
"I will," he promised.   
  
He waited until Lex's car was completely out of sight before he headed back in the house, resigned to face whatever questions and admonitions were waiting for him.   
  
For some reason, though, the remembered concern in Lex's face made him feel ready to deal with whatever his parents -- or even Perry White -- had in store.  
  
**  
  
While Lex had surprised himself by agreeing to continue therapy with Doctor Foster, it was far from the greatest shock he'd experienced in the past few days. Perry White's entrance into the Smallville scene had been as unexpected as it was unpleasant, doubly so when Lex had learned that White had somehow roped his friend into his aid.  
  
But that hadn't compared to the sickening fear that claimed Lex when Perry White turned his tenacious investigative instincts onto Clark.  
  
In the past, Lex had protected the Kents from likes of Roger Nixon and Sam Phelan without much thought. Although he had suspected they were hiding secrets beneath their Rockwellian facade, his desire to shield them had been born out of his own fond protectiveness, for both the parents and the son. In the back of his mind, there had been some vague desire to keep Clark's secrets to himself, but it had been more of a rationalization of his actions than a reason for them.  
  
Facing the same situation, _knowing_ that there was something to hide, to protect -- and that that something was Clark -- was more terrifying than Lex had ever anticipated.   
  
From the moment White had sidled close to offer him his father's head on a plate in exchange for Clark's, Lex had seen all the gruesome possibilities play out in his mind, variations on the theme of what someone like his father would do with Clark at his mercy. He had never expected the responsibility that would come with the knowledge that Clark wasn't a typical farm-bred high school student; it was the only time Lex had ever rethought his desire to know everything.  
  
He only wished he could blame his fear for Clark for his murderous reaction to White's proposal. The truth was that it had only been a focus for everything that had been hiding under the surface; Perry White had just been unlucky to strike upon him at the exact wrong time. It had been years since Lex had scared himself with his own emotional outburst, and it had been the wakeup call he'd needed to investigate the advantages of the same professional help he had been avoiding.  
  
Still, Lex's relief had been palpable when Clark had called to say that Perry White was leaving town _for real_ this time and wouldn't be back to bother Clark again. Lex had wanted details of how this change had come about but, as always, Clark was reluctant to share over the phone -- which was fine. Lex had known he could press him for details later, even as he set about making sure that White stayed far away from their little corner of Kansas. A reporter's word, especially White's, could only be trusted so far.  
  
A few days after White's departure, Lex finally got Clark alone at the mansion, one of the few places they both felt safe enough to talk. It helped that Lex had the place swept for electronic listening devices as often as possible.   
  
Clark started with the truth about the Grandville story, a tale that involved comparing himself to a solar battery overcharged by the recent solar flare, an airborne tractor, and the fact that he could easily run a thousand miles in the blink of an eye.   
  
Despite their new policy regarding honesty, Lex wondered if maybe he had a little too much of it as he listened to Clark's casual reiteration of events. Even though he had had bits and pieces of the information Clark had shared, putting them all together to create the whole picture was daunting, even for a Luthor.   
  
Clark was...really extraordinary.  
  
"Lex, are you all right?" Clark asked, a hint of amusement in his tone. "If I'm going too fast, I can slow down."  
  
Lex shot him a dirty look. "I think I'm keeping up," he said dryly. "You and White dangling over a gorge. Pete saving you. White on his way out of town. Did I miss something?"  
  
"No, that's about it," Clark admitted, setting back against the sofa with a sigh, as if the telling had been difficult. "I made sure Mr. White was on the bus yesterday and the effects of the solar flare are over, so I don't have to worry about jogging down the stairs and ending up in Florida."  
  
"You were lucky that White let this go," he said. "Even luckier he's so gin-soaked no one would believe him if he didn't."  
  
Clark covered his face with his hands for a moment, more a gesture of fatigue than despair. "I know." Still sprawled against the sofa, he dropped his hands and tilted his head ever so slightly to look at Lex. "He seemed pretty impressed that I had you in my corner."  
  
"He was just surprised that anyone would actually claim me as a friend," Lex disagreed.  
  
"Hey." Clark's expression was warm, drowsy eyes and soft smile. "I know you tried to protect me. Thank you."  
  
He had always had an alarming habit of confiding deep, personal things to Clark, things he thought he'd keep buried away until he was suddenly confessing them. Lex could feel it happening again, and he closed his eyes as he spoke. "I wanted to kill him for threatening you."   
  
"Lex..."  
  
He risked a glance at his friend's face. "And I know you don't want to hear this, but I think I would've, if I couldn't have silenced him another way."  
  
"I know." Lex felt Clark's hand brush against his bent knee. "But I wouldn't want you to. You've already done it once, you shouldn't have to keep protecting me like that."  
  
It was as close as they had come to discussing Roger Nixon. "I'd do it again. God, anything. If you needed me to."  
  
Suddenly, Clark was much closer, his hand still on Lex's leg, but his breath was against his cheek, the heat of his body seeping through Lex's slacks and sweater. He wanted to wipe away the seriousness that darkened the clean lines of his face. "You don't even know what you're protecting. But you'd still..."  
  
"You." It was more breath than voice. "I'm protecting you."  
  
"But you don't know why," Clark argued. "I think it's time you did, though."  
  
The part of Lex that had been terrified by the threat White had posed wanted to stop Clark from telling him anything, from adding to that burden; but a louder, greedier part couldn't give up a chance to have all Clark was willing to give him. Lex remained silent.  
  
Clark looked away, then looked back, took a deep breath, then released it. "You once told me you needed to understand the meteors, why they came down and changed your life. It...was me. It was my fault."  
  
"Clark --"  
  
He shook his head, rushing to continue. "That guy, the guy you said saw a ship? He was right, Lex. A ship came down -- _I_ came down. My parents found me in a field and they kept me but they had to get your dad to fix the adoption and that's part of why my dad hates your dad."  
  
Lex wasn't sure what he was supposed to do in the sudden silence that followed. He certainly wasn't prepared to say anything coherent. His mind was far too busy, rethinking everything he had ever suspected about Clark and revising his conclusions. Meteor enhanced, yes, but an alien? It had never been on the table. He was too -- perfect, too everything that humans aspired to be. But then, maybe that should've been Lex's clue because perhaps Clark was a little too good to be one of them.  
  
Clark was looking more pained by the second, withdrawing from their proximity, pulling into himself. "And I didn't even know, not until you hit me with your car and I didn't die. That's when my dad finally told me that I'm...not from around here."  
  
Lex finally managed to push sound past his clogged throat. "Who else knows?"  
  
"That I...? You, my parents, and Pete. That's it. And, well, Professor Willowbrook suspects. He thinks I'm..."  
  
"Naman."  
  
Clark nodded, lowering his eyes.   
  
Lex's mind was still trying to catch up and he suddenly remembered Clark's question from earlier. Maybe he should've asked him to go slower but it was done now, it seemed. He knew _the_ secret and Clark was watching him like Lex was his own personal judge, jury and executioner, like the ax was going to fall any minute.  
  
He laid his hands on Clark's shoulders, thumbs brushing against bare skin at the neck of his T-shirt. He felt how tense the muscles under his fingers were when he gave them a reassuring squeeze. Lex had always suspected something larger than themselves had brought Clark into his life, but now he knew he'd been right once to call it destiny. There was no other name for the force that kept bringing them together again and again to effect such change in the other's life.  
  
"Clark."  
  
"Lex?"  
  
He moved his hands up until they were cupping Clark's face, fingers in his hair, making Clark look into his face as he spoke. "Don't tell anyone else. Ever. You understand? No one else."  
  
"I told you."  
  
"That's different," Lex told him.   
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because I'll protect you."  
  
A ghost of a smile crossed Clark's mouth. "I trust you."  
  
For the first time, Lex could be honest in answering, "I know."  
  
He wasn't prepared for the crush of arms and weight around him, but he blinked to find himself wrapped in Clark as his friend held him tight, almost as if he were afraid he'd slip away if he didn't.   
  
Lex didn't question it, though: he closed his arms around Clark and hung on, savoring the moment.


	5. Chapter 5

Clark didn't see much of Lex in the days that followed, too wrapped up in helping Lana prove Dexter McCallum's innocence in the death of his wife, Louise. While the mystery of "Joe" the drifter was an irresistible one, Clark found himself even more convinced that his feelings for Lana had changed. He was still her friend, and he still cared deeply about her, but that certain feeling -- the one that ignited between Joe and Louise the moment they had met in 1961 -- had faded for him.   
  
Not even living through Jor-El's faded memories of making love to someone so similar to her had re-kindled it.  
  
He could've went to the castle to ask Lex about Lachlan Luthor instead of sending Chloe, but he had been too hot on the trail of the truth revealed by his visions -- and he hadn't really wanted to explain the reason for them. While Lex had continued to show a patience that left him breathless with relief, Clark didn't want to tempt his friend with a real piece of Kryptonian technology, especially since he wasn't sure he felt comfortable with the idea.  
  
That feeling was just another clue to Clark that he still had some trust issues to work out when it came to Lex. He had already trusted Lex with so much, but there were times when he fell back on the old cautiousness his parents has instilled in him. He knew what they -- at least, his father -- would say if they knew just how truthful he had been and even though he didn't agree with them, Clark sometimes felt himself hold back from being completely honest with Lex.  
  
Seeing how easily Joe had shared his secrets with Louise in the past, Clark couldn't help but be a little resentful. He still didn't understand how or why Jor-El had come to Smallville then, but Clark was the one living his life there, worried that he'd never find someone with who he could be that honest when Joe had done so in just a few days. Still, reliving Jor-El's pain at her death made his biological father a little more real, more human, for him.   
  
The fact that his, Lana's and Lex's ancestors had all come together in the same awful moment of history just added another layer of weird to the whole thing. As much as Clark wanted to keep denying that a thing called fate or destiny existed, the evidence kept mounting, making it harder to remain faithful by that old belief.  
  
But what kind of omen was it that Lex's grandfather had tried to kill his father? Clark didn't want to think about it.  
  
When Lana returned from her last visit from Dexter McCallum, she stopped by the farm to thank him for his help. She was subdued, and she talked about knowing when it was time to let things go; Clark wondered if maybe she had felt the same change between them as he had, at least until she seemed to blame his every action on his jealousy over Seth's interest in her. It was frustrating that Lana wouldn't believe him when he tried to point out that there was something weird about Seth, chalking it all up to a jealousy he didn't actually feel.  
  
It was even more annoying when his parents jumped to the same conclusion when he told them what was going on.   
  
"Son, you made a difficult choice when you decided to stay away from Lana for her own good," his father said, "And jealousy is a difficult emotion. I understand that..."  
  
"No, you don't," Clark said, closing the refrigerator door with a little more force than necessary. "I'm not jealous, I'm really not. I mean, sure, it's a little weird to see her with someone else but...lately I haven't really been thinking about Lana like that."  
  
"Really?" Jonathan asked. "Then what was all that business with helping her great-uncle?"   
  
"She's still my friend," he explained. "But I've put the rest of it behind me. I've moved on."  
  
"You have?" It was his mother who asked, her voice soft and inquisitive. "Honey, are you sure?"  
  
"Yes, I am," he told her. He really couldn't explain it. "It's all different now."   
  
His mother seemed to accept his word with a small nod. "All right. But you can see why Lana might not understand that yet. This is a recent change."  
  
Clark knew his mother was right, but it didn't mean the situation wasn't still annoying. Everyone was assuming his behavior was one thing when it was completely something different, but at least Chloe was willing to help him investigate Seth to prove he was telling the truth. And even after Clark stopped him, and Lana could see the truth, she still seemed to think Clark's concern had been exacerbated by jealousy, no matter what he said otherwise.  
  
Like he had other times when he needed to disconnect with his human, teenage problems, Clark decided to visit the caves and connect with some of his less-than-human ones. Even after everything Jor-El had done to him, he still found peace among the darkened corners and painted murals that were his closest link to a world he would never know.  
  
When he arrived, however, Clark found his refuge wasn't as peaceful as he had hoped. He had barely made his way inside the twisting space when he realized that there was someone else there with him. He slowed his approach, trying to move silently across the dirt, his flashlight pointed down at the toe of his work boot to further mask his advance.  
  
He could barely see in the cave, but he could make out the shadowy presence of a person near one of the decorated walls. Clark stepped closer, raising his flashlight until its light banished the violet-dark shadows.   
  
"Trance!" The flashlight bathed Trance's skin in soft, golden light. "What are you doing down here?"  
  
"Checking out Smallville's historical wonders," she told him, unperturbed by his appearance. "I've heard so much about the caves that I wanted to see them for myself."  
  
"The caves are guarded," he pointed out. Not that it had ever stopped him, but he had superspeed and Lex's friendship on his side.  
  
"I didn't notice them," she shrugged, head tilted up at the cave paintings like it had been toward the sun at the farmer's market. "They must not very good guards."  
  
Clark conceded that it was a valid statement, given that a local DJ had once hosted a rave there despite its so-called security. "So, what have you heard about them?"  
  
"That they're sacred to the Kawatche tribe," she said, her flashlight's beam hovering over several of the paintings as she spoke. "And that you found them," she added with a little smile. "What are you doing here anyway?"  
  
"I come here a lot," he admitted. "I was writing a paper on the caves last year, now I...it's just peaceful." It was as much truth as it was a lie.  
  
"I can understand why," Trance agreed. "I met a Kawatche elder the other day who told me all about Naman." She swept her flashlight over a pictograph. "I have to admit, he sounds like my kind of guy."  
  
"Naman?" Clark asked.  
  
She nodded. "A man who fell from the stars, has the strength of ten men and can start fires with his eyes. What's not to like?"  
  
When he had first met Trance, Clark had liked her because she seemed sweet and uncomplicated. While she still struck him as sweet enough, she was as complicated as anyone else he knew, just in a completely different way. "Sometimes you don't make any sense."  
  
"Are you trying to figure me out?"  
  
"A little," he admitted.   
  
Trance smiled. "Do you have Lex figured out? You've known him much longer."  
  
"Um, no," Clark said immediately, no hesitation. "Lex is pretty much the exact definition of unfathomable. I don't think I could figure him out in a few lifetimes."  
  
"Does it matter?"  
  
Clark thought about it for a moment. "Not really."  
  
He was rewarded with another one of her knowing smiles. "That's because you and Lex aren't like anyone else." It wasn't a question, and her statement startled Clark, but Trance continued. "Speaking of which..."   
  
She moved along the cave wall, brandishing her flashlight like a sword, the light a blade through the darkness. It finally came to rest on the figures of Naman and Sageeth engaged in their ordained battle. "When the elder was telling me about Naman, this was the part I didn't get."  
  
Clark followed her over, added his beam to hers until the red and blue colors of the pictographs gleamed. "Naman and Sageeth, you mean?"  
  
"Yes."   
  
"What about them?"  
  
"If they're supposed to create cosmic balance, why are they trying to destroy each other?" she wondered aloud.   
  
"Well, good and evil are usually about stopping the other," Clark pointed out, although he secretly agreed. If he was really connected to the Naman story, the idea of someone close to him becoming his mortal enemy didn't sit well with him.  
  
"Everyone defines evil differently," Trance said. "Evil might not even be the right word. Maybe Naman and Sageeth are less about good and evil, and more...order and chaos? Too much of either one can be a bad thing. Same with light and dark. You need both, but in moderation."  
  
"Balance through cooperation, you mean?" Clark asked.  
  
"Balance through union, perhaps." Trance paused. "Maybe they're not enemies. Maybe they're lovers." She looked at Clark, her expression thoughtful. "Or maybe I just don't understand it all as well as I think I do."  
  
Good and evil, order and chaos. Naman and Sageeth, destiny and balance.  
  
Him and Lex.  
  
It was like Trance's words were sliding into secret places in Clark's brain, lighting on emotions he'd never been brave enough to name before. But it was still there, a tangled knot of desire, longing and fear that he felt with every breath he took.  
  
"No," Clark answered. "I think maybe you understand perfectly."  
  
**  
  
Lex had thought Clark's admission to celestial origins would be the highlight of his month, but in doing so, he had seriously underestimated his father. Finding out that Lionel had actually murdered his own parents, with the help of someone like Morgan Edge -- even Lex had been surprised that his father was capable of something so heinous. But that knowledge had galvanized him into action, and he was determined to find the proof he needed to finally put his father away for the all crimes he'd committed.  
  
Especially since Chloe Sullivan's confession had also alerted him to the terrifying fact that his father knew enough about Clark's abilities to want him investigated. It was one of his newest, worst nightmares coming to life before his very eyes.  
  
Investigating his own father on top of his usual duties for LutherCorp didn't leave Lex with much free time on his hands, so he didn't see much of Clark, who also seemed to be mysteriously busy. It was actually a welcome reprieve because Lex was still trying to come to terms with his new reality, one where his life was even more like a Greek tragedy than he'd ever joked, complete with a patricidal king and a demigod reared in secret by kindly farmers.   
  
In midst of all the chaos, Lex also began the task of dismantling his secret room.  
  
It had served its purpose, but he had no more use for it, not now that he knew the answers to most of the questions it held. Each piece of evidence he had so painstakingly collected -- the Porsche, Clark's discarded family tree covered with the mysterious symbols, the strangely deformed bullets -- had been a clue to the truths Clark had hidden from him. But now Lex knew what they were, and the room was no longer a resource, but a danger, both to himself and to Clark.  
  
Lex couldn't risk what someone who wasn't him -- _someone like his father_ \-- might be able to discover about Clark if they had access to the everything he had gathered in that room. He also didn't want to risk whatever Clark's reaction would be if he found out about its existence. His friend might've forgiven him, now that the secrets were no longer an issue between them, but there was an equal possibility he would feel utterly betrayed. He decided there was no sense in inviting discord where none need be.   
  
By the time he ran into Clark at the Talon during Lana's little fit of rebellion, the room was empty of everything except the compacted remains of the Porsche, a sentimental reminder of the past. Everything else had either been destroyed or buried so deeply no one would ever find it.   
  
Even though he now knew what Clark could do, it still startled him when it saw it in action, like Clark's hasty departure from the coffee shop after Lana, presumably to save her from whatever threat Seth posed. Lex had barely had the time to blink, but Clark had been gone. It was like realizing again that Van's first bullet would've hit its mark perfectly if not for his friend's large, indestructible hand.  
  
In between the beginning of one investigation and the end of another, Lex was still having his weekly sessions with Dr. Foster. She seemed to think they were making progress, but Lex felt more paranoid and off-balance as the weeks went by. She told him that it was a byproduct of the process, especially for someone as private as himself, but she assured him they would push past that point eventually. Lex didn't see where he had much choice but to trust her judgment on the subject.  
  
He had finally exhausted her curiosity on his two ex-wives which was a relief because he was tired of reliving Desiree and Helen, but it also left him uneasy since he wasn't sure what her next line of inquiry would be. They had talked on and off about his relationship with his father, but she had yet to return to it with the same interest she had in their first few sessions.  
  
"I want to move our focus this week," she said during the latest session. "We've spent some time on your unsuccessful attempts at intimate relationships. I think maybe it's time we look at some successful ones."  
  
"That will probably prove to be more difficult than you realize," Lex told her. "My marriages are rather indicative of my track record in relationships. People who get close to me tend to end up trying to kill me."  
  
"Surely you've had a few good ones in your lifetime," she said.   
  
"They're not coming to mind."  
  
"How about Clark Kent?"  
  
Lex shot her a warning glance, even though she consistently ignored them. "I hardly consider what I have with Clark an 'intimate relationship,' Doctor. Last I checked, there were laws against that sort of thing."  
  
"Intimacy isn't just about sex," she argued. "In fact, given what we've talked about, I would say sex has little to do with intimacy for you. In one of our previous sessions, you called Clark your friend. Is that not true?"  
  
"Clark is my friend," he admitted warily. He didn't like how true the doctor's words were when it came to his attitude about sex. Since Helen, the disconnect between his emotions and his bodily needs had been even more disparate: three one-night-stands with lovely dark-haired women he'd met in Metropolis, whose names he had barely remembered afterward, and who he had barely thought about during the act itself. "Probably the best I've ever had."  
  
"But you don't think that's an example of an intimate relationship?" Dr. Foster's voice was soft and gentle. Lex decided it was a trick she had learned to lull patients into a false sense of security.   
  
There were some things that Lex did not let himself think about in the light of day, and one of those was exactly how he felt about Clark. The last thing he wanted to apply to it was the logic that Dr. Foster's question demanded, especially couched in the terms of intimacy and sex. "I don't really think Clark is something I want to discuss."  
  
Dr. Foster sighed. "Lex, if you've learned anything from our time together it should be that the things you don't want to talk about is probably what you need to discuss. So tell me why you don't want to talk about your friend Clark?"  
  
There were several answers he could give to that question, none of which he would let pass his lips. He searched for a safe response that would diffuse the doctor's interest. "If our positions were reversed, I wouldn't appreciate Clark discussing me with his shrink. I owe him the same courtesy."  
  
Dr. Foster sat back in her seat, looking resigned. "If we had more time today, I might continue on that train of thought."  
  
Lex breathed a sigh of relief and crossed the room to pour himself a scotch. "Fortunately, you mean? As always, I've enjoyed our time together."  
  
She opened her black medical bag and sat a bottle of pills on his desk. "If you're insomnia continues, give those a try," she suggested. "Until next time, Lex."  
  
The doctor probably hadn't even cleared the gates before Lex reached for the scotch again. He knew he had accepted the need to continue these sessions with the doctor, but part of hm still rebelled against it and wondered if they were actually helping. Lately, he had felt as if he had less emotional control, not more; and while he understand that therapy was a process, it was one he looked upon with no small amount of suspicion. If he didn't see something he considered progress soon, he would be through with his little experience with the quasi-science of psychiatry.  
  
By the time Lex had finished up the work he had put on hold for Foster's visit, it was late, darkness sweeping the flat lands, but he still needed to get out for awhile -- out of his head and out of the mansion. As he had the last time, Lex ended up at the Kent Farm, parking a little away from the house, just in case. When he saw the dim light coming from the loft, he bypassed the house completely.  
  
He came up the stairs to the loft to find Clark sitting on the couch, textbooks spread around him.  
  
"The last time I saw you, you were a blur speeding after Lana."  
  
Clark glanced up at the sound of Lex's voice, the surprise quickly replaced by a smile. "Yeah," he said, laying down his pencil and notebook. "I'm definitely glad that's over."  
  
As much as Lex liked Lana in her own right, he wasn't so generous when it came to the game she played with Clark. "I'm sure it wasn't easy for you to see Lana with Seth, even with the magnetism to blame."  
  
Clark surprised Lex by rolling his eyes. "What wasn't easy was listening to everyone tell me _that_."   
  
Lex leaned against the railing and crossed his arms. "Truth hurts?"  
  
"Not in this case," Clark told him. "Because I wasn't jealous. At all."  
  
"This is _Lana_ we're talking about," Lex pointed out.  
  
"I know, Lex," he said. "But things have changed. I'm over her."  
  
"Just like that?"  
  
"It's not all that sudden," he admitted. "It's been different since I came back from Metropolis, and...it took me a while to pick up on it but I don't feel like I used to. I still care about her, but she's just my friend." He shot Lex a dark look. "Of course, no one believes me when I say that."  
  
Lex held up his hands in surrender, then pushed aside a stack of open books to make a place for himself on the sofa. "Hey, if you say you're over her, I believe you. I'm just surprised. This is the first I've heard of it."  
  
"Next time, I'll know to run something in the Torch," he said with a grin. "It'll save me some time." Clark turned a little so he was facing Lex, looking at him with green, guileless eyes. "I'm glad you came by tonight."  
  
"So am I," Lex said, returning the smile. "This place has become a refuge of sorts for me."  
  
Clark's fingers brushed against Lex's thigh as he scooped up the books and moved them to the table. "Anytime. My barn is your barn."  
  
The pleased shiver he felt at those words, the sudden desire to do something with his hands other than clench them together -- Lex wondered if they could be considered signs of the intimacy the doctor believed he shared with Clark. "I'll remember that."  
  
"So what was it this time?" Clark wanted to know. "Work, your dad? What?"  
  
"Mainly the thoughts in my own head," he admitted. "Sometimes the silence at the castle gives my brain too much leeway to think things it shouldn't."   
  
"I know that feeling," Clark said, and Lex could sense that it wasn't simply polite agreement with his plight. Clark moved in a little more. "Lex, have you ever had someone tell you something that makes so much make sense when you didn't think it ever would?"  
  
"You mean, like have your friend admit that he's -- not from around here?" Lex asked, amusement and gratitude both in his dry response.  
  
"Something like that." The fact that Clark could return an echo of Lex's amusement in his smile spoke volumes. "But it's more like -- what is that people say? -- about the scales falling from your eyes."  
  
"Who have you been talking to?"  
  
"It's not who I was talking to," Clark said. "It's more who I was talking about." Clark was watching him with the same frighteningly honest expression he'd had when he'd confessed being an alien, color rising in his face to settle in a flush across his cheeks. His eyes were moving over Lex's face like he wanted to memorize it, intent and deep and unreadable. His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip and then his eyes zeroed in on Lex's.  
  
He thought he could feel the heated puff of Clark's exhalation against his own skin and suddenly Lex forgot how to breathe.   
  
If this was the intimacy that Dr. Foster had hinted at, it was good Lex had never felt it before. It was likely to kill him.  
  
"Lex, I..."  
  
They both jumped when Lex's cell phone trilled in his pocket.  
  
"They never give you a break, do they?" Clark said, eyes now fastened on the spill of books on the low table in front of them.  
  
"You know what they say about rest and the wicked," Lex said, amazed he could get out anything coherent as he fished his cell from his pocket. He had received a text message, short and cryptic, but he understood it perfectly and it left his mouth as dry as the previous moment had.  
  
His contact had finally tracked down the not-so-dead Morgan Edge.  
  
Lex stood, stuffing the phone back into his pocket. "Clark, I'm sorry. I have to go now."  
  
Clark followed, scrambling to his feet. "Yeah, okay."  
  
Lex couldn't stop himself from brushing his hand up Clark's arm, squeezing his shoulder before he stepped away. "I'm probably going to be gone a few days," he told him. "But when I get back...we'll talk."  
  
Clark nodded, then surged forward, mimicking Lex's gesture. His hand felt huge and fever-hot, burning Lex through the layers of wool coat and silk shirt. "Lex, be careful, okay?"  
  
"Don't worry, Clark," he told him. "It's just business."  
  
As he headed down the stairs from the loft, the parting image of Clark's worried frown and intense eyes lingered in Lex's mind before he shook them away and focused on what lay ahead. Hopefully, Lionel would soon be on his way to prison for a very long time, and he would be one less person either of them would have to worry about.  
  
Lex didn't dare glance back as he got in his car, but he didn't need to. He could feel Clark's gaze on him, like the heat of the sun on his back. He held onto that feeling as he sped into the night, off to make deals with the only kind of devils he knew, the ones who were just like him.


	6. Chapter 6

Clark had never been a big believer in intuition since his tended to fail him in important ways, but he knew a bad feeling when he had one, and he had had one ever since Lex walked out of the loft that night. He knew Lex had said that whatever had pulled him away _in the middle of the night_ had just been business, but Clark couldn't make himself believe it.  
  
Or maybe he was just crazy and his unease was tied to the confession he'd almost made before Lex had hurried away. Not that he was all that sure what he had been about to confess, only that he had been about to let all of his thoughts spill out, thoughts that had been circling in his head since his conversation with Trance -- Naman and Sageeth, balance by union, lovers instead of enemies. It made him think about all kinds of things, like the ying yang symbol on a necklace Chloe sometimes wore, opposites wrapped around each other to make them whole. None of it made sense in his head, and Clark suspected it wouldn't have made sense if he'd said it out loud either, but he had almost said it all anyway.  
  
Both of his parents picked up on his mood, his father shooting him worried glances all through dinner. After they had finished their meal, his mother asked for his help with the dishes to gently suggest, once he was elbow-deep in bubbly dishwater, that he should spend some time with his friends after he finished his chores the next day.  
  
Clark didn't have it in him to explain what was going on, so he ducked out as soon as the last dinner plate was dried and put away, hoping to escape to the relative sanctity of the loft.   
  
Unfortunately, his father knew him well enough to head him off at the pass.  
  
"Do you want to talk about it?" his dad asked, no preamble. Clark tried to skirt around him to climb the loft steps. "Clark."  
  
He sighed. "Not really, Dad."  
  
"What are you not telling me, son?"  
  
It was a question Clark had no intention of answering in complete honesty. "I'm just worried about some stuff."  
  
Jonathon raised an eyebrow. "Just some stuff?"  
  
"If I thought there was a way you could help me, I'd tell you," he said. "But I think this is something I need to work out on my own."  
  
His father sighed. "It's something to do with Lex, huh?"  
  
"Dad!"  
  
His father raised a hand to stave off his reaction. "It's not exactly difficult to figure out."  
  
"It's nothing bad," he assured him. "I'm just worried about him."  
  
He laid a comforting hand on his son's shoulder. "What brought this on?"  
  
Clark shrugged. "Lex ran off the other day and I haven't heard from him since. I guess I'm letting my imagination run away with me."  
  
"Lex has been through a lot," his dad said. "I'm sure he can take care of himself."  
  
Clark didn't find his father's words very comforting but he nodded, letting the conversation go. He couldn't explain his uneasiness to his father, not without explaining everything he was keeping from him, including the fact that Lex knew almost all of his secrets.  
  
He took his mom's advice and spent time at the Talon the next day with Chloe, Pete and Lana. Their company was a welcome distraction from his concern over Lex, and it was easy to forget when they were laughing over their lattes that he wasn't just a regular teenager, even if 'regular' was a relative term in Smallville.  
  
Clark had almost eased that ball of anxiety knotted in his gut when he came outside to do his chores the next morning and found Lex hiding in his barn with a story about how an assassin had tried to kill him.  
  
After he checked out the castle and found nothing except the glass shard, Clark was at a loss at what to do to help Lex. But Clark's gut had been warning him that something was wrong for days now, and now he had proof that it wasn't all in his imagination.   
  
Especially since Morgan Edge was involved.   
  
Lex had noticed his reaction to the crime boss's name, but Clark hadn't wanted to explain. He'd brushed it off with a non-answer -- "I spent a summer in Metropolis, remember?" -- and tried not to think about how his parents were going to react when he told them that Edge was still a threat.  
  
The drive back to the farm with Chloe was a tense one, made even more so when they arrived to Lionel Luthor waiting for them. He might've been able to fool his parents with that concerned father act, but Clark didn't trust him one bit, especially not where Lex was concerned. He found it much more plausible that Lionel was trying to kill his son than that Lex was suffering a psychotic break.  
  
Until he found his friend cradling a blanket and calling it Julian.  
  
Clark believed Lex -- he couldn't _not_ \-- but everything was stacking against his version of events, as Clark's parents were ready to point out.  
  
"I know you don't like seeing Lex like this, but he needs help," his mother pointed out, sadness and practicality both plain in her voice.   
  
His father was more worried about his safety than he was Lex's sanity.  
  
"Why didn't you tell us this before?' he demanded. "Morgan Edge knows all about your abilities and he knows that kryptonite can kill you!"  
  
 _So does Lex_ , he wanted to shout. _Do you still want me to turn him over to Lionel?_  
  
But his loyalty to Lex went way past that, way past anything he could put into words. And suddenly he realized that even if Lex _was_ crazy like everyone was telling him, he wouldn't abandon him, not when he was so certain he was in danger.  
  
Even Lex's wrath in the face of Clark's parents' disbelief couldn't change that.  
  
"Your little Kent _cabal_ ," Lex said, venom dripping from his words, anger in every line of his tense frame. "Such a select group and so secretive. It doesn't matter how many of your secrets I know, I'll always be on the outside, won't I?"  
  
Clark ignored his mother's gasp of shock and lunged forward to stop Lex. "Where are you going?"  
  
"To find Morgan Edge and prove I'm not crazy," Lex told him. "You're either with me or against me, Clark. Choose right now."  
  
It wasn't really a choice; Clark followed.  
  
In the truck on the drive to some warehouse in Metropolis, Lex finally started to lose some of the tension bunched in his muscles. He leaned his head back against the truck seat and closed his eyes, unconscious gestures of trust that Clark savored beneath his overwhelming concern.  
  
"Thank you," Lex said, his voice low and rough. He ran a hand over his bare scalp. "For coming with me."  
  
"Anytime, Lex."  
  
"Even if I'm crazy?"  
  
"You don't think you are."  
  
"No," Lex said, pinning him with an intense look that Clark could see in the rearview mirror. "I don't."  
  
"Then I don't think you are, either."  
  
Clark thought he felt the ghost of a hand near his bent elbow. "Your faith in me is astounding, Clark."  
  
"It's no more than you've had in me over the years," Clark said, swallowing against the emotion brought on by the awe in Lex's voice. "Or how else do you explain why you kept giving me chances when you knew I was lying to you?"  
  
Lex was silent for a long moment. "I guess some people might consider it a kind of faith."  
  
When they found a sweatshop operating where Lex was sure they would find an abandoned warehouse, Clark could see the fractures developing Lex's self-belief that he wasn't losing his mind. Clark held onto his, though, even when they returned to the castle to find Darius alive and well, despite Lex's earlier assertion to the contrary.  
  
"Your friend helps needs help, young man," Dr. Foster told him, echoing his mother's words to the same non-effect. "He's not in his right mind."  
  
"Maybe she's right, Clark," Lex said, voice shaking as badly as the hand that leveled the gun at them. "Maybe I am crazy. But are you really willing to take that chance?"  
  
Clark wasn't interested in taking any chances with Lex's life.  
  
Once they managed to get away from Darius, Dr. Foster and the rest of the guards trolling in the mansion, Clark tried to figure out where Lex could hide while Clark did some more investigating. The Talon was out -- Lionel would think to look there first, and Chloe was already on his radar. And his house was definitely out; Clark winced thinking about the reception he was going to meet when he finally made it home.  
  
With his options limited, Clark took Lex to the closest place he could think of where no one would look for them and called the one person he thought would still be able to help him.  
  
"You should be safe here for awhile," Clark said as he settled Lex in an empty stall in the Smallville Stables. "Lana said she would come as soon as she could."  
  
Lex had been out of sorts since they had started their trek through the fields, but he seemed to come back to himself once he was stationary. "Maybe you should just go home, Clark," he said. "This is becoming complicated and I don't want you involved."  
  
"I'm already involved, Lex," Clark reminded him. "In case you missed the part where your dad showed up at my house or you let slip to my parents that you knew my secret."  
  
"I did?" Lex asked, frowning. "Sorry."  
  
"You had more important things on your mind at the time," Clark said. "I got a vial of what that doctor wanted to inject you with. I'm going to get Chloe to analyze it, see if maybe they've been drugging you with something."  
  
"You still believe me?"  
  
"Of course I do."  
  
When Clark met Lex's eyes, there was something so intense about the gray-blue gaze that Clark almost wanted to look away. "You really are too good to be human, you know that?"  
  
Clark was saved from having to answer by Lana's appearance, and he left Lex with her, more determined than ever to save Lex one more time.  
  
**  
  
For someone who valued control the way Lex did, he was trapped in a fate worse than death. If he was losing his mind -- and he was no longer as sure as Clark that he wasn't -- then he hoped his father did manage to kill him because he couldn't live like that: perpetually out of control of everything, even himself.  
  
As he thought about the scope of his father's plan, one which had to involve half of his staff at the castle, Dr. Foster, and a team of cleaners at the very least, Lex began to worry more and more about who he could trust. After all, his father was a charismatic billionaire; most people could be swayed by one where the other failed, and money was persuasive enough most of the time.  
  
Clark was the one person still above suspicion. Lex didn't know why he knew he could trust Clark, other than the fact that his friend had spent entirely too much energy saving him to want him dead. And Clark had eventually trusted him with his secrets, and that counted for something, even when the hurt of the years of lies still burned in his chest. But there were no more lies, and Lex could safely depend on Clark, the way so many other citizens of Smallville did when they were in trouble.  
  
But everyone else -- he didn't know what they were capable of. While he doubted the Kents actually would help his father, they would be glad to see him gone in order to protect their son. And what of Clark's friends? He already knew that Chloe had made one deal with Lionel and had betrayed the boy she supposedly loved in doing so. Why wouldn't she be as eager to sell out Lex, who she barely knew, if that meant releasing herself from Lionel's control? Or Pete, who had always hated him, not just for his family's creamed corn factory, but for his friendship with Clark?   
  
Even pure, sweet Lana, who sat with him at Clark's request. Why was she here? Did she really want to help him or was she taking her chance when she had it? She had only recently tried to rob the Talon under the influence of Seth's so-called magnetism, but who was to say that was the real reason? Maybe she had just been biding her time.  
  
After Lana tried to force him to drink the poison she'd brought with her in her little thermos, Lex knew that he was no longer safe. Not that he could wait there any longer anyway -- while Clark was a nice boy and a good friend, he had always lacked the initiative to do what had to be done in such situations, where Lex had initiative in spades. He wasn't going to sit in a stable in Smallville and let Lionel and Edge regroup. He was taking the battle to his father.  
  
When Julian began to cry, he knew he had wasted too much time.   
  
It was dark on the road as he headed to Metropolis, and the truck he had commandeered was a less-than-optimal example of vehicular engineering. It took so much of his focus just to keep it on the road, and his thoughts were rippling through his mind like lightning, quick and hot and startling, and nothing he did, no song he sung, _could keep Julian from crying_.  
  
Lex wished he could've waited for Clark. He had a feeling that Clark would've been able to help soothe his fussy baby brother. Lex often found his presence soothing anyway, and for completely inexplicable reasons. It stood to reason that maybe he could have a similar effect on Julian. He might've even known a better song to sing to him, maybe something in whatever language he could read that was written on the Kawatche cave walls.   
  
That was another reason Lex couldn't let his father and Morgan Edge kill him quite yet. There was still so much he wanted to ask Clark, so much he still wanted to know about him, and he had only had a few weeks of that heady freedom. He refused to die with all those questions still unanswered, not when he was close enough to wrap his hands around those mysteries. There were other things his fantasies wanted from Clark, too, things he had long ignored for the sake of the boy's friendship but the secrets, owning that small part of him that so few did...he could make that be enough.  
  
But he needed to stop Morgan Edge first.  
  
It was easy to make his way through the LutherCorp building once he reached Metropolis, easier than he expected, actually. Lex supposed the wild eyes and the gun worked in his favor as much as the fact that he was _Lex Luthor_ did. There was satisfaction in how his father looked at him over the barrel of the gun, more fearful than Lex had seen him since he and Lucas had staged their drama right in that room.   
  
"Be careful, Lex, please." Even as Lionel gave him Edge's location, he was pretending to care by cautioning him. "I can't bear to lose another child."  
  
Lex had no intention of dying, that day or any time soon, but he didn't let his father in on that thought. He looked down at the address on the slip of paper his father had given him and was already working out his plan for what he'd do once he got there.  
  
The neighborhood he was looking for was vaguely familiar, a community set up on the edge of Metropolis so the city's rich could have expansive estates with huge, stately homes and carefully manicured lawns. He had known more than one young socialite who hailed from the area and, even in his harried condition, Lex managed to find the drive leading to Edge's hideout with little trouble. He had expected a more clandestine location for a notorious crime lord, but he supposed the hack plastic surgery had made him bolder, more reckless.  
  
It was a charming little ivy-covered cottage and the security was light enough that Lex was well inside before he encountered resistance. He took down Edge's guard easily, the light from the colored glass in the windows dancing around him as he hit the floor.   
  
Edge was just as predictable; Lex finally felt some of his control return as he laid his gun against Edge's neck. "I gave you a chance, Edge, but you really screwed it up."  
  
It had been going so well but then Edge, like Julian, wouldn't shut up, talking about his father and their plans and how Lionel had gone soft in his old age. Lex told him Edge he was lying, but wasn't that what Lex had believed himself? That his father was behind it? He thought he had but now all he knew was that he didn't want to really think about how his father had did this to him. Lex wanted it to be Edge's fault, _it was Edge's fault_ , and Morgan Edge needed to die to make all the questions go away forever.  
  
But at least he wasn't crazy. It was the one thing he was relieved to hear. _He wasn't crazy._  
  
"You have to admit it was an elegant plan," Edge said. "Just like when he was a kid. Either you crack so completely that you can't form a coherent sentence, or anything you say sounds like the ravings of a madman. But he doesn't have to win, Lex. We can bring him down...together."  
  
But Lex had already tried that and it had failed. He cocked the gun. "Maybe I'll just kill both of you."  
  
And then Clark was there in a blur of speed, taking the gun away from him, and Lex was torn between being glad to see him and angry that his friend had stopped him. Lex would've forgiven him, though, forgiven him anything really, until he saw Edge's smile, saw Edge's lack of reaction to Clark's inhuman speed, heard his voice say, "Hi, Kal."  
  
There were no words for the betrayal that sliced through Lex as he watched Clark pull back, looking ill, and realized that the only way Edge could know Clark was if _Clark_ were in on it too, and he had to be because Edge was brandishing a rope of bright-green beads that Lex finally recognized, and another stab of betrayal pierced through him because Clark hadn't trusted Lex for so long but somewhere along the way he'd told Edge his secrets.  
  
"You're in on this, too, Clark?"  
  
"No, Lex, it's not what you think!" It was all Clark could get out before Edge advanced and the effects of the meteorites doubled him over as surely as the blows Edge landed on him. Lex watched in sick fascination as skin he had come to think of as invulnerable bruised and bled under Edge's beaded fist.   
  
But Clark was still _his_ , betrayal or no betrayal, which Lex should've been used to it by now because Clark lied with every breath, and look, and innocently un-innocent touch that promised more than Lex knew he was offering.  
  
And Lex still wanted Morgan Edge to die.  
  
The beads flew apart, a spill of bright green dots against the polished floor, and Clark fell among them, and Lex fired and sent Edge tumbling down with everything else, his body landing heavily outside of the open French doors. There was control in that, in watching the smoke curl away from the fired gun, and Lex desperately held on to that feeling.  
  
"Thank you," Clark whispered from the floor, face still bleeding. Lex knew if he kicked away the meteor rock beads, the wounds would heal up like they had never been there, except Lex wanted him to hurt, like he hurt from Clark's defection.  
  
"Don't thank me, Clark," he said, voice so steady he could almost ignore the pulse of the drugs in his system. "You're part of this. And just because I don't have a meteor rock bullet handy doesn't mean I'm not going to kill you too."  
  
"I'm your friend, Lex," Clark whispered, pushing frantically at the meteorite beads. "I would never do anything to hurt you. You have to know that."  
  
"Did you betray him, too, Clark?" Lex grabbed his jacket and shook him, used it to keep him pinned among the beads that kept him weak. "Is that why he beat you to a pulp? How did he know to use the rocks? How could you trust him with your secrets when you wouldn't tell me?"  
  
Lex wasn't sure what he could do to actually hurt Clark besides force a meteor rock bead down his throat, but he never got a chance to contemplate how because he looked up to see that Edge had escaped, even with a bullet in him, and Edge needed to be stopped even more than Clark needed to be punished. Lex could deal with his own personal Judas later.  
  
He made it out in time to see the car racing toward him as fast as Edge could go, and some small part of him that was still rational screamed for him to _move, move_ , but Lex ignored it. He wanted Edge to _die_ and since Clark was gone, there was nothing to keep him from caring if he died too, and the desire to kill won out. Lex stood his ground and emptied the clip, bullets barreling through windshield glass before they tore through Edge, and it didn't matter that the car was still hurtling toward him because at least Edge was _dead_.  
  
But then there was a gust of wind and Lex was flying out of the way, hitting the ground hard enough to scrape the hands that broke his fall. He turned back to his certain death in time to see the car plow into Clark, _folding_ around him, all of its forward motion brought to an abrupt halt by the sheer immovability of Clark's body.  
  
When the car had completely stopped, Clark pushed it away, easily sending it flying back with the shove on his hands, and Lex couldn't help the awe that welled up at the sight, dumbfounded, because it was one thing to know Clark could survive the impact of a car, it was another thing to see it firsthand.  
  
Then Clark moved toward him and for the first time Lex was scared of what it meant that Clark was an alien, that Clark could bend steel with his fingers like it was spaghetti, that Clark knew Lex knew all his secrets. Clark took another step forward and Lex scrambled back on his hands, the sounds coming from his mouth suspiciously close to begging.  
  
But there was no escape from an inhumanly fast alien; Lex felt the vice that was Clark's hand close around his arm and yank him to his feet, and Clark pulled him tight against him.  
  
There was so much pain on Clark's bloody face that Lex almost felt guilty, until he remembered that Clark had tried to help his father kill him.   
  
"I'm sorry about this," Clark whispered, and Lex thought he meant his betrayal until he saw the hand coming his way and realized Clark was apologizing for murdering him.  
  
Lex wanted to protest that he wouldn't forgive him, but then everything went black.


	7. Chapter 7

With Lex's unconscious form slung over his shoulder, Clark ran.  
  
He didn't have a destination in mind as he fled the estate at super speed, he only knew that he needed to put as much distance as possible between them, Edge's bullet-riddled body and the ominous black SUV that had been arriving just as they sped away. Clark knew he needed to find somewhere safe for Lex, but he had no idea where that could be. Every place he thought to turn would have them found or would put someone else he knew in danger, a risk he dared not take.  
  
Clark couldn't live with himself if someone else ended up in the hospital like Lana.   
  
By the time Clark finally stopped running, dusk was starting to seep into the bloody colors of the sunset, and they were in the middle of a field somewhere between Smallville and Metropolis, some anonymous stretch of corn as far as the eye could see. Lex was still unconscious and that worried Clark, so he settled his friend on the ground, one arm around his back to support him as he checked him over. Lex's breathing was fine, and nothing appeared damaged to his x-ray vision, but Clark didn't know what kind of drugs they had used on Lex or what effect being knocked out would have on his already-compromised health.   
  
It wasn't the first time Clark had rendered Lex unconscious for the greater good, but he still didn't feel great about doing it. He also didn't know how Lex would behave once he was aware again. Clark wondered if Lex would still think that he was part of the plot to kill him when he woke up, or if the drug would be out of his system before then.  
  
He consciously pushed those questions to the back of his mind. His first priority was to find somewhere safe -- then he could worry about the rest of the problems still plaguing them.  
  
Clark was still ghosting his hands over Lex to make sure super speeding hadn't damaged a stray limb when he heard rustling in the corn stalks. He turned sharply toward the noise, shielding Lex with his body against whoever was approaching.  
  
When Clark saw the familiar figure of the intruder, he blanched, unable to believe his eyes. "Trance?"  
  
"Clark." The deepening twilight painted her skin a strange violet, like the lightest colors of a healing bruise. "I found you."   
  
" _How_?" he asked.   
  
"I had a feeling," she said. "I've come to help."  
  
"You have a lot of 'feelings,' don't you?" Clark asked.   
  
"You could say that," she said. "I know you have questions but now's not the time. You have Lex to worry about."  
  
Clark thought of all the strange things Trance had said to him since they met, the things her words had made him think. He stood up, cradling Lex's limp form against him. "How do I know I can trust you?"   
  
Instead of answering, she took a step forward and pressed something into Clark's hand -- a key. "This is for my shop. Go through the back door, up the stairs. No one will think to look for you there."  
  
"Trance..."  
  
"I promise, I'll explain," she said. "But not now."  
  
"Trance --"  
  
"Let's just say that you are not the only one who comes from very far away," Trance said. "Now, _go_. I'll meet you back there in a little while."  
  
Clark wanted to do something -- protest, ask questions, demand answers -- but Trance was already gone, only the slight noise of her departure witness that she had ever been there. He felt the bite of the key still clutched in his free hand, and knew he didn't have much choice. There was no one else he could risk asking for help, and he doubted anyone would think to look for them there.   
  
And Clark still wanted answers.  
  
Night had fallen completely by the time Clark breezed into town. The alley behind Trance's shop was small and dark, and Clark barely slowed down enough to be seen by the naked eye. He didn't lapse back into normal human speed until he was inside, door locked tightly behind him. The first thing he noticed was the stairwell and, remembering Trance's directions, he carried Lex up until he reached a short hall that ended with a door. The door led to a sparsely furnished room, but it had a bed with sheets that looked fresh, and Clark gently laid Lex down on the mattress.   
  
The room also had a window; once Clark pulled the heavy shade and drew the curtains tightly shut, he risked turning on the lamp that stood on a chest of drawers in one corner. Its bulb wasn't very bright but it threw off enough light that Clark could see Lex's form in its dim glow.   
  
Now that they were safe -- at least for the moment -- the other questions Clark had had started to assert themselves once again. His first concerns were for Lex's health: what the drugs had done to him, how long they would be in his system, when he would wake up. He knew Lex needed a doctor but he wasn't sure if it was something they could risk. He thought about Toby, but he wasn't even sure how to get in touch with him, and he certainly didn't have a way to pay him.  
  
Clark didn't know how long he sat alone in that small room, watching Lex, before the closed door creaked open to reveal Trance. She had an obnoxiously sparkly bag over her shoulder which was at distinct odds with the concern of her face.   
  
Clark automatically jumped to his feet. "Hey."  
  
She nodded, then glanced at Lex. "How is he?"  
  
"Still out," Clark admitted, frowning. "I'm worried."  
  
Trance patted the bag hanging from her shoulder. "Let me see what I can do."  
  
"You still haven't told me why I should trust you," he protested as Trance perched on the edge of the bed and started digging around in her bag.   
  
"I'm your friend, Clark," she said. "I'm not sure there's much more I can say."  
  
"Maybe you could start by telling me what you meant when you said I wasn't the only one who came from very far away."  
  
"I meant exactly what you thought I did, _Kal-El_." She didn't look up from her search through her bag. "I wasn't born on Earth, either."  
  
Clark had never imagined what it would be like to meet someone else who was an alien. "Are you from Kry...from the same place I am?"  
  
Trance finally looked up. "No," she said softly. "I'm from a different place. Very, very far away."   
  
"So how do you know about me? Know my name and everything?"  
  
She reached into her bag once again and removed a syringe, still wrapped in its protective packaging. "I...know things. It's sort of my gift."  
  
"You can see the future," Clark said. "That's how you knew about the solar flare before it happened and how you knew where I was today."  
  
"I can see all futures," she explained. "Every possible possibility from wherever I'm at. So it's less like knowing the future and more like knowing how to make a really good guess."  
  
"If you're from -- out there," Clark asked. "How did you get here?"  
  
"That's complicated," Trance said. "And not really relevant. All you need to know is that I want to help you help your friend...if you'll let me?"  
  
"Do I really have much choice at this point?"  
  
Trance smiled a little. "Not really, but I promise you won't regret it."  
  
Clark nodded toward the syringe she held. "What are you going to do with that?"   
  
"I'm going to take a sample of his blood," she said, turning Lex's arm over to find a vein. "We need to see what they were giving him."  
  
"Can you do something for him?"  
  
"I've picked up a few things," Trance told him. "I'll see what I can do."  
  
Clark watched while Trance efficiently drew the blood from Lex, noting that she really did seem to know what she was doing. She held the blood up to the light for a moment, as if she could analyze it by mere sight. For all he knew, she could.  
  
Instead, she made her excuses and disappeared downstairs with the sample. Clark still didn't know what to do with himself, so when Trance re-appeared a few minutes later, he was standing uselessly in the middle of the room.   
  
"Here," Trance said, thrusting a tray into his hands. "I thought you might be hungry." It contained a haphazard collection of food items, a few pieces of fruit, some crackers, a pitcher of juice. "I'll be back in a little while," she promised before she disappeared again.  
  
Clark realized he was hungry once he was faced with something to eat, and he made short work of tray's contents between shooting apprehensive glances at Lex on the bed. After he finished, he found that the other door in the room led to a small bathroom which looked as antique as the furniture in the bedroom, right down to the claw-foot tub.   
  
He splashed cold water on his face, then wet an extra wash cloth and carried it back into the bedroom. From their mad rush from Edge's mansion through the countryside, Lex had streaks of dirt on his face and neck. Clark cleaned them away before running the washcloth over Lex's hands, the only other part of him that had been exposed to the elements.  
  
With nothing left to do but wait, Clark took the time to remove Lex's shoes and tuck his friend under the quilt laying at the end of the bed. He shrugged out of his flannel and threw it over the back of the chair, before he settled to wait.   
  
Clark didn't realize he had fallen asleep until Trance crept back into the room, startling him back to wakefulness.  
  
"Did you figure anything out?"  
  
"Some things," she told him, casting a glance at Lex. "His body is burning off the drug quickly on its own, so it should be gone within a day or so." Trance produced a small glass bottle from her pocket and set it next to the lamp on the chest of drawers. "When he starts to wake up, give him this. It'll help."  
  
Clark rose from the chair and settled on the edge of the bed, frowning down at its occupant. Even though Lex was still out, it finally looked more like sleep and less like unconsciousness, his eyes moving beneath the lowered lids. "Will he be okay?"  
  
"I think so," Trance said. "From everything I've seen, Lex is tough. He'll survive this."  
  
It made Clark think of what his father had said before this nightmare had started. He couldn't stop himself from touching his fingers to Lex's cheek. "I hope you're right."  
  
Trance's hand was light on his shoulder. "You care about him a lot."  
  
"He's my best friend."  
  
"But it's more than that, isn't it?"  
  
Clark kept his eyes on Lex's face, his voice both amused and resigned. "That obvious, huh?"  
  
"Maybe not to everyone," she said, consolingly. "But I have my ways, you know?"  
  
"Trance, are you alone in the universe? Like I am?"  
  
She took the non sequitur in stride, tightening her friendly grip on his shoulder. "No," she told him. "But my people are...solitary by nature. I'm a lot like Lex that way."  
  
He just nodded and felt her hand slide away. "Why don't you try to rest?" she suggested. Trance turned off the lamp as she moved to leave, throwing the room into darkness.   
  
Clark settled himself on the floor next to the bed, prepared to keep his vigil through the night. As he leaned his head back against the mattress, Trance's voice floated to him from somewhere near the door.   
  
"Just because we're solitary doesn't mean we don't get lonely," she said. There was an unmistakable ache in her voice that made Clark's throat close up. "Or that we don't want to find someone to be solitary with."  
  
After that, the only sound in the room was Lex's soft breathing, unconsciously in sync with Clark's.  
  
**  
  
Despite the fact that Lex's last thought had been that he was about to be murdered, screaming back into consciousness was not a welcome sensation. Thanks to his exposure to meteor rocks, Lex had not been sick one day in the past fourteen years and, given how he felt, he was pathetically grateful for that fact.   
  
Lex felt like he was on fire, burning up from the inside out. His blood, his lungs, his nerves -- it felt like they were _boiling_ under his skin, and every breath was more laborious than the last. His head was filled with fever-dreams, disjointed scenes of terror and confusion, reels of memories best never remembered. He couldn't escape the torment; between his body's revolt against whatever disease had him in its throes, and his mind's torturous memory loop, Lex was caught in hell.  
  
But somewhere amid all the pain, there was Clark.  
  
His hands were warm against Lex's already-feverish skin, but they were soothing, first moving bare over Lex's sweat-slick face, then dragging the cool relief of a wet cloth. Lex wanted to thank him but speech seemed like too complicated a task, forcing his brain, then his throat and voice and lungs into usefulness. He might have murmured his gratitude because he felt the soothing warmth return, fingers on his cheek, his lips.  
  
"Hang in there, Lex." Clark's voice was as soft as his touch and just as calming. "Okay? It'll be better soon."  
  
He knew he was supposed to be angry at Clark for some reason, but Lex couldn't dredge up the specifics of it and, at the moment, he didn't care. He only cared that Clark brought comfort when nothing else did.  
  
At one point, Lex felt himself pulled upright and some liquid poured down his throat. It had a sharp, herbal taste that wasn't unpleasant as much as it was unexpected, but it was followed by cool water that cleansed away its echoes.   
  
Everything went numb after that, until even the pain itself dimmed. Without the fire coursing through him, Lex felt himself dragged back down into oblivion, a blessed darkness where none of the memories could follow.   
  
He didn't know how long he was out, but when Lex opened his eyes again, the world was finally righted. There was no pain or fever, and his mind was his own, no paranoia creeping at its edges. It was the first time in days Lex felt like himself instead of a demented, carnival-mirror caricature of who Lex Luthor was supposed to be.  
  
With sanity came a calm he also hadn't experienced in a while, maybe in months, and with that calm came the curiosity that was his second nature. He didn't know where he was or how he had gotten there, and it was something he needed to remedy.  
  
The room was small, lit only by the dying rays of the sun coming through a window on an opposite wall. There wasn't much to it other than the bed on which Lex lay -- a clothes chest with a lamp, an empty chair pulled into the middle of the room, angled toward him. He shifted a little under the quilt that had been laid over him, an act that made him aware that although the pain had passed, his body still remembered it in his shaky, watery limbs.   
  
Ignoring his body's protest, Lex turned on his side and finally saw the most interesting thing the room had to offer.  
  
Clark.  
  
He was asleep where he sat on the floor, broad back against the sturdy wood frame of the bed. His head was tilted back, resting on the top of the mattress, and his dark hair was just within Lex's reach. Before he could stop himself, Lex laid a weary hand on that dark head, fingers curling into the wild strands.  
  
"Lex?" Clark's voice was sleepy but he moved quickly, twisting up to look into Lex's face.  
  
"Clark," he said in answer, experiencing another kind of warmth at the sight of Clark's sudden, illuminative smile.   
  
Lex watched as Clark scrambled up to sit on the edge of the bed, one hand ghosting over Lex's shoulder. "How are you feeling?"  
  
"Better than I did a little awhile ago," he admitted. "But that's not saying much. What happened?"  
  
A shadow crossed Clark's face, the kind that Lex associated with the lies Clark so often told. "What's the last thing you remember?"  
  
Lex thought about it for a moment, following the line of memory back past the fever-dreams into the reality that had spawned them. "I remember...getting Edge's address from my father. Finding Edge. I remember..." _You're in on this, too, Clark?_ "...things not going as I had expected."  
  
Clark moved off the bed and pulled the chair closer as he sank into it. His face remained shadowed, serious. "Do you still think I'm in league with your father and Morgan Edge?"  
  
"No." Lex could admit to himself that it had been one of his more unlikely conclusions while under the drugs' effect, but it didn't change the fact Clark had secrets from him that had to do with Morgan Edge. He pulled himself up so that he was sitting, propped against the headboard. "But I am curious as to how Edge knew about you."  
  
"It happened over the summer," Clark sighed. "In Metropolis, I made some bad decisions and got mixed up with Edge. He found out about the meteor rocks on his own and he almost killed me."  
  
"Was my father connected that time, too?"  
  
"Yes," Clark admitted, then lifted his chin stubbornly. "But it can wait. I'm not going into all of this right now."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Because there are more important things on my mind," he told him. "Like you. Are you sure you're all right?"  
  
"I'm sane, if that's what you're hinting about," Lex said. "I'm no longer convinced that everyone is out to get me, just the people that are."  
  
Clark almost smiled at that, an old joke between them. "That's an improvement -- I think." He pulled his chair closer until his knees were touching the mattress. "The drugs should be out of your system by now. It was the scotch, you know. That they drugged."  
  
"That'll teach me to rely on alcohol, won't it?" Lex shook his head. "Clark, not to change the subject from my all-important mental health, but where are we?"  
  
"Oh." Clark glanced around, as if just noticing they were in a strange place. "We're at Trance's, above her store."  
  
"Why is it that Ms. Gemini seems to turn up at the most interesting moments?"  
  
"We can trust her," Clark assured him. "And if she'd wanted to turn us over to your dad, she's had more than enough time. It's been about a day since I brought you here."  
  
"So we've just been hiding out?"  
  
Clark nodded. "I didn't know what else to do, really," he said, then reached out to squeeze Lex's hand in his for one brief second. "And I was worried. You kept getting worse."  
  
"We can't hide here forever," Lex sighed, his mind already awhirl with plans. "I've got to figure out what I'm going to do about my father."  
  
"Lionel can wait, at least until you've had a chance to rest," Clark argued, giving him one of those motherly looks he learned from Martha Kent. "Your dad's not going to look for us here. He probably thinks you're hiding out somewhere in Metropolis. It's not like there's some kind of connection between you and Trance."  
  
Lex couldn't argue with the logic, but he could only hide out so long before his father would get impatient. "My father also probably believes you're helping me. That's dangerous, for you and your parents."  
  
"My parents can handle your dad," Clark said. "Stop worrying." He frowned. "Just so you know, though, the next time you tell me it's "just business," don't expect me to believe you."  
  
If Lex had any remorse about the secrets he kept, he might've been affected by the reproach in Clark's voice. "I didn't want you involved," he said.   
  
"And how many times has that backfired?" Clark asked, rolling his eyes.   
  
"Point," he said.  
  
"Any more questions?" Clark asked.  
  
"Dozens." Lex smiled a little and got an answering grin for his trouble. "But none that can't wait a little longer."  
  
"Then you should probably rest some more," Clark advised, pushing back the chair as he stood.   
  
Lex refused to admit to the fatigue still heavy in his body. "If you insist."  
  
"I do."  
  
Clark pointed him in the direction of the room's tiny bathroom and Lex made use of the facilities. He noted in the small mirror hung above the sink that his face said what he had not wanted to, a ravaged visage of ashen skin, bruised circles, and glassy eyes that told Clark more about how he felt than any words he might say.   
  
When he emerged from the bathroom, Clark had produced a metal pitcher full of ice-cold water that Lex gratefully drank down before he let his friend corral him back to the bed where crisp, new sheets waited. "I wasn't in the bathroom that long," he pointed out.  
  
Clark smiled. "Fast, remember?"  
  
"One day I plan on finding just how fast," Lex warned him.  
  
"One day, sure," Clark said in his annoying, mothering voice as he watched Lex settle on the bed. The sun had finally disappeared from the window and the room was awash in the cool indigo of twilight. As he listened to the sounds of Clark puttering around, Lex could feel the pull of sleep on his mind, playing a tug of war with his desire to think about all the things he needed to figure out.   
  
Lex could only just make out Clark's form as he kneeled beside the bed and touched a warm hand to his forehead. "Stop thinking, Lex," he said, as if he could read his mind. "Your dad will still be evil in the morning."  
  
"What about you?"  
  
"My dad will still be stubborn as hell."  
  
The laugh was unexpected, but Lex didn't fight it. "That's not what I meant."  
  
"I know." Clark's grin glowed white in the falling dark. "I'm gonna go back to my nap."  
  
"On the floor?" Lex asked, turning on his side to where he could watch as Clark resumed his position at the side of the bed. "That can't be comfortable."  
  
"Alien, remember?" Clark said, giving him one more glance over his shoulder before he leaned his head on the mattress and closed his eyes. "Don't worry about me."  
  
"Easier said than done," Lex admitted quietly.  
  
There was silence, and then -- "I know what you mean."  
  
Lex didn't know how to turn off the part of his brain that wanted to scheme and plan, even when he knew he needed the rest. But Clark was there, a beautiful distraction, and Lex didn't fight the urge that came over him to ghost his fingers through the hair so easily within his reach.  
  
Clark didn't seemed to mind, and Lex had been too stripped bare by the past few days to care about what it meant to reveal such a weakness. The contact quieted his mind and, on the comfort it brought him, Lex drifted off to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Except for the shifting shadows from its one window, time seemed to stand still in Trance's attic room.  
  
When Clark woke the next morning, it was to the bright gold of the morning sun pouring in through the filmy curtains, shade raised to let the light fill the quiet space. The bed was empty, sheets tangled, and the quilt had somehow ended up thrown over Clark where he still sat on the floor, a pillow mysteriously wedged under his bowed head. He might have wondered about Lex's whereabouts if not for the tell-tale sound of running water in the adjacent bathroom, little rivulets of warm steam escaping from beneath the closed door.  
  
Clark was smoothing the quilt over the straightened sheets when the bathroom door opened and Lex emerged in a cloud of curling steam. His pale skin was flushed from the heat, and he was dressed in dark slacks and a gray shirt that could've only come from his own closet.  
  
"Where did you get the clothes?" Clark asked, sitting on the edge of the made bed.  
  
"The ever-surprising Ms. Gemini supplied them this morning," Lex said as he finished buttoning the shirt. It reminded Clark of another morning in his loft, which felt like a forever ago. "You're going to have to explain to me why you trust her one of these days."  
  
Clark didn't reply because he knew it was something he'd probably never tell Lex. "How do you feel?"  
  
Lex didn't look at him as he answered; instead, he leaned against the wall and stared out into the bright morning sun. "Like my father had me driven insane to cover up the fact he murdered his own parents." He shook his head. "Just when I thought he couldn't get any worse."  
  
"What are you going to do now?"  
  
"Honestly? I don't have a clue." Lex sighed. "Morgan Edge is gone, and so is all the proof I had on my father. And I'm certain he's done his usual thorough job at cleaning up behind what's happened the last few days. I'm back where I'm started."  
  
"You have to do something." The thought that anyone, including Lionel Luthor, could go unpunished for what he had made Lex endure was terrifying to Clark, almost as horrible as the moment he had learned that Jor-El expected him to conquer the planet.   
  
"I know. I just don't seem to have many options at the moment." Lex paused. "Right now, I think murder might be the best way to go."  
  
"Lex."  
  
He glanced toward Clark at the sound of his name. "It's a viable solution, maybe the only one I have if my father has convinced the world that I've gone crazy in my absence."  
  
"Trance has been monitoring the newspapers," Clark told him, proud of his forethought. "You haven't even made the Inquisitor."  
  
"Well, thank goodness for that," Lex drawled, his tone bored and sarcastic. He shook his head. "Ignore me. It seems my sense of humor didn't make the same miraculous recovery my sanity did."  
  
"I think you're allowed," Clark said, rising to his feet. He moved until he stood next to him by the window. "You don't have to apologize for being angry."  
  
"You would say that," Lex said. He pulled himself upright and turned so he was looking at Clark, his face illuminated by the sun. "But I do, and not just for that. I'm sorry I doubted you, Clark. That I could think..."  
  
There was such regret in Lex -- in his voice, in the tight lines of his face -- Clark wanted to comfort him, but stopped himself just before he touched him. He settled for words. "This honesty thing is new. For both of us. It's not surprising that you could maybe think something like that, with everything that was going on."  
  
It was Lex who moved closer, his eyes like quicksilver in the sunlight. "There's no one I trust more than you. I hope you know that."   
  
Clark nodded. "I'm sorry, too. For the lies, from the beginning."  
  
"I think you've more than made up for it," Lex told him softly. "You've gone above and beyond what any man could ask of a friend."  
  
Clark remembered being on red kryptonite, how the surge of freedom it had given him had also bestowed confidence, a giddy recklessness that left him unafraid of repercussions. What he felt in that moment was close to that, except there was fear, only it was outweighed by the need to be truthful for once, all consequences damned.  
  
He licked his lips nervously and asked the question that had been tripping through his mind since that last night in his barn. "Am I really just your friend, Lex?"  
  
Lex watched him with a frightening intensity, every muscle in his face suddenly still. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then seemed to change his mind. Clark was startled to feel Lex's hand on his shoulder -- not a grip, but a caress as his thumb brushed over the hollow of his throat. "I don't have the words for what you are to me."  
  
In that moment, Clark wondered how he had ever mistook kryptonite poisoning for the stirrings of love; what he felt was nothing like how it had been when Lana's meteorite necklace had churned up in his insides, this bright, expansive feeling that started in his chest and spread like honey, that left him breathless with anticipation.   
  
Lex's hands came up to his face, leaving a trail of fire on his skin, and he tugged Clark's mouth down to meet his, and then Lex was kissing him -- not hesitant, but careful, achingly gentle in the way he let his lips explore Clark's. Clark leaned into Lex, into the kiss, mouth moving against his as his hands slid beneath Lex's untucked shirt and over skin that still held the faint heat of the shower.   
  
Clark was being careful, too, with the way his hands ghosted over Lex's back as he pulled him closer, but then Lex's fingers sank into his hair as he deepened the kiss and only years of ingrained restraint kept Clark from leaving bruises as he stopped thinking about anything other than the fact that _he was kissing Lex_.  
  
It was Lex who finally broke away, his chest rising sharply as he took in several quick breaths. He kept his hands on Clark, though, and his lips brushed over Clark's cheek as he rested against him. "Maybe I was wrong," he said. "Maybe I have gone crazy."  
  
Such an amused, indulgent tone; Clark felt its answer in his own laughter-tinged voice. "Because you _like_ me?"  
  
"Because I've given into a temptation I've fought for years." Lex pulled back a little more, only to touch his thumb to Clark's bottom lip, sliding the rough pad over its swollen curve. "It speaks to a horrible lapse in self-control, not to mention judgment."  
  
"Maybe it just means you're finally coming to your senses," Clark said, watching the way the sunlight played across Lex's face.  
  
"This is not indicative of sanity." But Lex was smiling as he said it.  
  
"Years?" he asked. That admission had surprised Clark, made him want to cast himself back through every memory he had of Lex since they had met, looking for signs he might have missed that hinted at what they were becoming.   
  
"You've always been very important to me, Clark." It wasn't exactly an answer, except that it was the kind Lex often gave. He further distracted Clark with another kiss, one that left him so addled he almost missed what Lex said after they separated. "And that's why I don't want you involved in whatever happens next."  
  
Clark managed to frown through his haze of happiness. "It's a little late for that, Lex."  
  
"No, it's not," Lex argued. His hands -- spread flat against Clark's chest -- curled to grip his biceps. "I want you to go home. Tell them you've been looking for me but couldn't find me. Then stay there until this is over."  
  
"And what are you going to do?" Clark didn't like the idea of Lex sending him away. The worry he'd lived with before started to gnaw at his gut.  
  
"I'm not sure yet," Lex conceded. "But this still isn't your battle."  
  
His own hold tightened. "Lex..."   
  
"No, Clark," Lex said, cutting him off. His face was stern, eyes glittering with intensity. "We've just established that you're important to me -- too important for me to let you become any more of a pawn in my father's sick games." The gentle brush of lips against his was in marked contrast to the steel of Lex's words. "Especially with the secrets you have. It's too dangerous."  
  
"I'm not going to win on this, am I?" he sighed. Clark realized that Lex was right, that he did have secrets that meant he needed to stay off Lionel's radar as much as possible, something he hadn't managed so far. And he knew his parents had to be worried, after he had disappeared so many days ago.  
  
"You get your way more than you should, anyway," Lex told him with a smile in his voice. "Better luck next time."  
  
Despite his acquiescence, Clark wasn't quite ready to deal with the outside world. He took the initiative and pressed his mouth to Lex's, then let his lips slide down his chin to Lex's pale throat, a trail of toothy nips soothed by his tongue. "When do you want me to leave?" he murmured in between biting caresses.  
  
Lex sounded breathless as he tried to answer, a fact that made Clark feel smug. "I guess...a little while longer won't matter."   
  
Their kisses grew more desperate, more hungry, and Clark held on as tightly as he dared. He worried about what would happen to both of them once they left the quiet haven of the attic room, if the connection they had made would survive the stresses that waited.   
  
But each touch of Lex's skin against his own was a promise that they would endure and Clark let himself be seduced -- by Lex, by his touch, and by the gold glow of the morning sun that surrounded them with its light.  
  
**  
  
Despite his agreement to Lex's request, Clark remained reluctant to leave. Lex was both touched and annoyed by Clark's desire to stay, but his own impulse to protect him won out and he finally demanded his departure. As much as he wanted Clark with him, his friend was safer at home, and Lex had plans to make and fathers to plot against, both of which were easier to do without his living, breathing conscience at his elbow.  
  
"Clark's gone," Trance said as she stepped into the attic room a few hours later.   
  
"Finally, you mean?" Lex asked, barely looking up from the papers in his hand. He was sitting in the middle on the room's bed, stacks of printed newspaper strewn across its surface, a legal pad balanced on his bended knee.   
  
"He's concerned," Trance said. Her statement was just that -- a declaration, no undercurrent of emotion coloring the words to give Lex a clue as to her opinion on it.  
  
"He would do better to worry about himself," Lex told her. "I have my own future well in hand."  
  
"Really?" There was amusement in her voice.  
  
"I will," Lex corrected, sparing her one chilly glance. "I'll be out of here soon."  
  
"Take your time," she said. "You can stay as long as you like."  
  
Lex wished he was the kind who would be content to hide, to disappear into the night and wait out his father's threat. If he was, his next steps would be easy instead of the quagmire of power plays he needed them to be.   
  
In response to Lex's silence, Trance grinned, a thoroughly mischievous expression on her impish face. "Not such a tempting offer now that Clark's gone, is it?"  
  
Lex chose to ignore her insinuation and asked the question that had plagued him since Clark had informed them of their location. "I'm not still not clear as to why you're helping me in the first place."  
  
Her teasing expression faded a little. "Clark's a friend. He needed someone and I was glad to be there."  
  
"That's your only reason?"  
  
"No," she said.   
  
"So you have others?"  
  
"Yes," Trance said.   
  
"Care to share?"  
  
"No," she said again. At his look, she added, "They're not bad reasons, they're just mine. You know how that is, don't you?"   
  
It dawned on Lex that for all his suspicions of Trance Gemini, he had still underestimated her. Her smile told him the realization was written all over his face. "Well, your assurances have certainly put my mind at ease."  
  
Trance rolled her eyes at his sarcasm and reached for the door. "You've been given a second chance, Lex. Let's hope you don't waste it."  
  
While he didn't appreciate a stranger's dubious insight into his affairs, Lex had to admit it was an astute observation. He _had_ been given another chance, although it was more like his third or fourth. Once again he had survived something that seemed un-survivable: the meteor shower, the Porsche accident, months on that island, and now his downfall as writ by his father's hand.   
  
Lex had always known that his father was a dangerous man, one who didn't hesitate to play mind games with his son in his quest to shape him into the ideal heir, but he had never thought those games would ever go so far as Lionel's plan. Perhaps that was his most dangerous failing -- the inability to appreciate just how ruthless and self-serving his father was.   
  
He couldn't afford to make that mistake anymore, not where Lionel was concerned, and not with -- Clark. Ever since Clark had come clean about his secrets, Lex had thought about the danger of his father ever learning even a glimmer of the truth. It was a concern that plagued him, that made him glad that people like Roger Nixon and Sam Phelan were dead. Lex couldn't risk Clark in his war with his father, especially now that he realized there was nothing Lionel Luthor wouldn't do to obtain a goal or bury the truth.   
  
Whatever step he took next would have to accomplish so much that Lex wasn't even sure where to begin. Besides himself and Clark to think about, there was also Chloe Sullivan, who he had promised to protect when she came to him about her deal with Lionel. So far, he hadn't even done a great job of protecting himself, let alone a naive teenager who had sold herself to Lionel for the price of a dream. That Lionel had done so to get information on Clark was troubling; that Chloe had agreed when Clark was supposedly one of her best friends was even more so.  
  
Lex's search through the newspapers Clark had solicitously delivered to him confirmed what he'd said: there was nothing of interest in them, and certainly nothing he could use. No mention of his own crimes -- the hijacked motorist, Morgan Edge's second murder -- or anything related to the Luthor family. Nothing to alert the masses that anything unusual had happened in his world.   
  
He had a few favors he could call in, owed to him by people who weren't necessarily as powerful as his father, but who were powerful enough -- even if his calls would have to reach halfway across the world. Lex still worried, though, that whatever he chose to do wouldn't be enough, and his father would still succeed in crushing him. He didn't like to think about how close he had come this time.  
  
He hadn't admitted it to Clark, but Lex recognized he had actually came to losing his sanity, not all of due to the drugs. One of the few things he still trusted from the mouth of his lying, traitorous shrink was the fact that the his experiences on the island haunted him. Sometimes he even re-dreamed his hallucinations into existence, coming awake with his fingers curled as if around Louis's neck.   
  
Then there had been his flashbacks to Julian.  
  
But Lex couldn't entertain those fears at the moment, not when the battle was still waiting to be waged. And he couldn't let his father win, not when he had such a good reason to want to win, something more than just the dark surge of triumph he had felt when he'd emerged victorious in past skirmishes.   
  
Somewhere in the midst of this nightmare, Lex had gotten the one thing he had always wanted but never thought he could get, an unexpected gift he doubted he deserved. But Clark seemed to want him, too, and if he managed to arrive whole on the other side of the gauntlet waiting for him, Lex had no intention of denying himself his prize.  
  
Lex had stopped depending on other people a long time ago but with Clark, it seemed right. Strange, but right.  
  
With nothing left to do but move forward, Lex finally left the little attic room, down into the back of Trance's shop. The stairs opened into a homey little kitchen, complete with a sink, stove and refrigerator as ancient as the tub a floor above. His hostess sat at the plain wooden table that held a cut vase of delicate orchids. Her fingers were stained with the red-purple juice of the pomegranate seeds she was eating.  
  
"Want one?" she asked, holding out a seed. When he shook his head to decline the offering, she spoke again. "I guess you're leaving now?"  
  
"I think it's time," he said.  
  
She looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, I think it is. You can only hide from the snake in the grass for so long."  
  
"My father is less a snake and more a hydra, spawning heads as fast as I can cut them off."  
  
"You'll be fine," Trance told him. "You're stronger than you think."  
  
"And you know this...how?"  
  
"I'm just guessing." Trance smiled that infuriatingly mysterious smile and chewed on another pomegranate seed. "But I'm right, more often than not."  
  
"Then let's hope you're right this time," Lex told her.   
  
His hand was on the door that would open out into the alley, which he planned to follow until he reached the Talon. With Lana still in the hospital and his father's focus likely in Metropolis, it was closed and the safest place Lex could think of to arrange discreet transportation to get him out of Smallville. He paused before he pushed on it, shooting Trance one last glance. "Aren't you going to wish me luck?"  
  
"I don't need to," she said. "You have something better."  
  
He waited for her answer.  
  
"Destiny, Lex," she said, still smiling. "You have destiny on your side."  
  
The nonsensical words of Clark's peculiar friend; they shouldn't have made Lex feel better.  
  
But they did.


	9. Chapter 9

In the days that followed, Clark couldn't help the worry that gnawed at him as he waited for some word of Lex. As he'd promised, Clark had returned to the Kent Farm after leaving Trance's shop, but that was the only promise he kept. He hadn't been able to lie to his parents about what had happened over those last, few days -- that he'd found Lex, that he'd helped Lex, and that Lex had seen him use his powers.  
  
Predictably, Jonathan Kent had been less than thrilled with his revelations, and the freeze that permeated his every moment at home was like nothing Clark had ever experienced from his father. Jonathan was silent with anger, and angry with fear, jumping at every sound of someone coming up the drive. His dad was sure Lex and Lionel were just biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment to come steal Clark away for good.  
  
It might have been easier if school was any better, but it wasn't. Lana remained hospitalized, in rehabilitation for her broken leg, and she made it obvious she blamed her predicament on Clark. He might've cared more if he hadn't been so consumed with concern for Lex. Chloe, too, was in a weird mood -- one minute, guilty and remorseful for no apparent reason, and then, frustrated and angry. Only Pete seemed untouched by what was going on, but Clark had a sneaking suspicion it was only because his friend was secretly glad Lex was out of the picture.  
  
When two weeks passed without even so much as a cryptic email, Clark started to fear the worst. Lionel had already proven that he was willing and capable of doing great harm to his own son for his own reasons, it didn't take much to follow that line of thought to a very grim conclusion.  
  
Seventeen days after he last saw Lex at Trance's, Clark came home from school just as the phone in the kitchen started to ring. He had expected to be spend another afternoon in his father's chilly company as they worked around the farm, but he had been surprised when Jonathan had stiffly declined his help. Instead of arguing, he had followed his mother's advice and acquiesced, giving his father the space he seemed to need.  
  
Clark dropped his backpack on the counter as he reached for the phone, picking it up by the fourth right. "Kent Residence," he said dutifully, cradling the receiver between his ear and his shoulder.  
  
"Clark."  
  
There was no mistaking that voice, the way only Lex said his name. "Lex."  
  
"How have you been?"  
  
Clark rolled his eyes, even though Lex couldn't see him -- only he could sound so nonchalant, as if the last few weeks had never happened. "I'm fine. Where are you?"  
  
"Back at the castle."  
  
"What does that mean?"  
  
"It means that everything is fine...for now," Lex said.  
  
Clark didn't like the qualifier in that sentence and his grip on the phone tightened until he heard the plastic creak in response; he guiltily relaxed. "Why doesn't that make me feel better?"  
  
"Because you've always had this very quaint notion that life isn't messy and complicated, when it's nothing but."  
  
Clark wanted to argue with Lex's interpretation of his personality, and might've on another occasion. Instead, he asked, "Can I come over?"  
  
"Not yet." He strained to hear the nuances of Lex's careful words. "Things are still settling and there's still a few things I need to attend to first. But -- soon, all right?"  
  
"Okay."  
  
"I just wanted to let you know I was back in Smallville," Lex continued. "I know how you worry."  
  
"I do." Clark paused, prayed his voice wouldn't betray all the feelings building in his chest. "I'm glad you're back, Lex."  
  
"It's good to be back." Lex cleared his throat, and Clark wondered if maybe he wasn't the only person dealing with unexpected emotion. "Take care, Clark."  
  
Clark was hanging up the phone as his mom came in the door, a grocery bag tucked under each arm. As soon as she noticed her son, her eyebrows raised. "Well, this is a change."  
  
"What do you mean?" he asked, moving to relieve her of the bags.  
  
She gave him one of those patented mom looks. "I haven't seen a smile like that on your face in weeks, maybe months."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Really," she nodded. "Can I ask what prompted this change?"  
  
"Lex called," Clark admitted, setting the bags on the counter. "He's back in town."  
  
For a long moment, Martha looked at him, searching for something in his face. She must've found it because she suddenly softened, only a hint of sadness in her eyes as she reached for him. "I'm glad, sweetheart," she said against his shoulder as she hugged him. Clark wrapped his arm around her in return, glad as always that she understood what he couldn't express in words.  
  
She pulled back a little to catch his eyes with her own. "Just...don't look that happy when you tell your dad, okay?"  
  
Clark took her advice and remained suitably subdued when he broke the news to his father, who surprised both his son and his wife by reacting calmly. He didn't know if it was because Jonathan had already known or for some other reason, but Clark's announcement seemed to lighten the weight on his father's shoulders, not add to it; over the next few days, Jonathan seemed to ease up on his self-imposed exile with his son. They were still awkward around each other, and Lex was still the bald elephant in the room between them, but things were starting to improve.  
  
It gave Clark hope -- about everything.  
  
Knowing Lex was back and safe helped Clark's mood toward everyone, including Lana and Chloe, so much so that he accompanied his perky blonde buddy on one of her get-well visits to Lana at rehab. Like his mending relationship with his father, it wasn't the greatest moment in his friendship with Lana, but at least he was making the effort. He was sure it would pay off in the end.  
  
His elevated mood also gave Clark the resolve to make another overdue visit to a certain someone else. After saying his goodbyes to Chloe, Clark headed past the Talon and on toward Trance's shop, where he found its proprietor staring intently at a potted bonsai. At the sound of her name, she looked up. "Clark. I've been expecting a visit from you."  
  
"I would've come before, but..."  
  
She waved away his apology. "I knew you'd be by sooner or later."  
  
"You knew or you _knew_?" he teased, leaning back against the counter.  
  
"I...suspected," she smiled. "I'm sure you have questions."  
  
"A few," he admitted.  
  
Trance's attention returned to her bonsai. "I'll answer what I can," she told him as she picked up a pair of small clippers. "But some things aren't important, at least not for you. There are some things that are only part of my story."  
  
He nodded, agreeing to her terms. "You see the future, right?"  
  
"I see _possibilities_." She frowned down at her plant. "Some are less pleasant than others. And sometimes...I help make the good possibilities the more probable ones."  
  
"Is that why you came to Smallville? To change something?"  
  
"I've changed a lot of things," Trance said. "Every decision we make changes something. They open up new -- and sometimes better -- possibilities, they close off others." She lifted her clippers and pruned away a low-hanging sprig from the trunk of her twisted little tree. "Did I make things better?" She shrugged. "I think I have. But only you'll ever know for sure."  
  
Clark crossed his arms, trying to tame all his wild thoughts into some semblance of order. "You came to save me from one of these less pleasant possibilities?"  
  
Trance stopped and laid down her shears. Her eyes were dark and unfathomable, shining with something Clark couldn't identify. "You weren't the reason I came. You just ended up involved."  
  
There was only one person Clark could think of whose future was so intrinsically linked to his own. "Lex."  
  
She nodded. "I did change things for you, but it was never my part of the plan. In fact, I might've made things worse for you. I don't know."  
  
"What would've happened to Lex, if you hadn't done whatever you did?"  
  
Trance ran nervous fingers over a tiny branch. "Lex hasn't had an easy year. Things would've taken its toll on him. Much sooner than you would've realized. And it would've been too late by the time you had."  
  
"I'd rather have Lex than some other future without him, no matter what it would've been."  
  
Trance smiled.  
  
"Are you going to stick around now that you helped do whatever it is you did?" Clark asked.  
  
The sound of the bell on the door interrupted whatever Trance might've planned to say. She and Clark turned as the door opened to reveal Lex entering the shop. Clark knew he was staring but he couldn't help himself, his eyes hungrily drinking in the details -- the stylish lines of the suit and the dark jacket, the leather driving gloves, the tinted shades Lex was slowly pulling off his face in response to the dimmer lighting of the shop. When Lex's eyes met his, a slow twitch of a smile curved his lips, one that started an answering curl of feeling in the pit of Clark's stomach.  
  
"Clark," Lex said, his voice oozing warmth like honey. "This is an unexpected surprise."  
  
Trance leaned in, resting elbows on either side of her potted bonsai. "Something I can help you with, Lex?"  
  
"Actually yes." He moved toward them, pulling off his gloves. "With the only _other_ florist shop closed at the moment, I was interested in having some flowers sent to a friend of mine recovering in the hospital."  
  
She grabbed an order pad and a pen from beside the register. "I'm sure we can find something nice for Miss Lang. Something...pink. She strikes me as the pink type."  
  
Lex still looked at Trance with suspicion, clear in his doubt that she was sincere. Clark could only imagine how he'd react if he knew the things he did about her, about her abilities and her otherworldy origins. He was certain Lex wouldn't believe her as readily as Clark had, or as easily as he had believed Clark.  
  
And Clark couldn't explain why he trusted her, but he knew he did.  
  
"I guess that's my cue to clear out, huh?" he joked, pointing toward the door and taking a step in its direction. He suddenly felt shy around Lex with Trance there; he didn't want their reunion played out in front of an audience, not even of one. "I'll leave you guys to it."  
  
"Actually..." Lex began. "I was going to call you, but you saved me the trouble. I've finally finished the renovations at the castle, if you wanted to swing by and check them out."  
  
The feeling from earlier sizzled through Clark's blood at the promise in Lex's eyes, which had little to do with the castle's decor. "Yeah, sure. That'd be great."  
  
"Tomorrow afternoon?"  
  
Clark grinned, probably big enough that it could be seen from space. He didn't care. "Definitely."  
  
Lex flashed him a smile of his own, then turned to scowl at Trance who was watching them with indulgent amusement, the way Clark's mom watched puppies playing or toddlers picking wildflowers.  
  
"I like your new little tree, by the way," Clark told Trance in farewell, leaning against the door so that a sliver of sunlight poured into the shop from the other side.  
  
"I do, too. It's a surprising little plant." She ran a hand over the edge of the leaves, and Clark almost thought he saw light glitter across the leaves in her fingers' wake before he dismissed it as a trick of the light. He noticed the same trick made it look like sparks gleamed in her eyes. "Hey, Clark."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"I think I will stick around for awhile. There's nowhere else I need to be at the moment, and...Smallville's not so bad, really."  
  
Clark glanced at Lex, still watching Trance dubiously, and he couldn't fight the dizzying rush of affection at the familiar sight of his friend. "It does have its advantages."  
  
At that moment, it was easy to believe in infinite possibilities and a future where everything was possible.  
  
**  
  
For a man who had been taught to think of life in terms of warfare, in the language of victory and defeat, it made sense that Lex had mentally considered this new period in his relationship with his father a detente. A shaky one, one likely to go from cold to hot in the blink of an eye, but they had moved from open hostility to the insincere concern of diplomacy. For the moment, it was enough.  
  
But Lex would know to be better prepared for the next missile volley, and preparedness took time, money and planning, which was where he had turned his attention once it was obvious not even his connections were going to unearth any evidence of Lionel's connection with Morgan Edge. With enough time and money, maybe, but Lex couldn't put his life on hold waiting for that day. Instead, he accepted his father's fake affection, thanked him for his chance to return to LutherCorp now that his "dreadful malady" had passed, and returned home to his ancestral home in the cornfields.  
  
He had changes to make there, as well. Lex hired a new company to do thorough background checks on his remaining staff -- Darius had been dealt with swiftly and appropriately before he even returned -- and anyone with even the slightest discrepancy had been transferred, given severance or otherwise moved off the premises. Then, they had all been replaced by the same firm who had handled the terminations, held to the same exacting standard of loyalty and trustworthiness.  
  
The house staff and new security weren't the only new additions. The last piece of business had been the castle-wide sweep for surveillance equipment -- the primary reason he hadn't wanted Clark to come over until he was sure the estate was clean. It tried his patience to have to wait, but he wasn't yet up to a showdown with the Kents if it came to one after the last visit he paid to their farm, and Lex had yet begun to feel safe anywhere where he wasn't completely in control.  
  
When he read a small piece in the Daily Planet about how Dr. Claire Foster had suffered her own mental breakdown and had subsequently disappeared, presumably to Europe for treatment, Lex couldn't find it in him not to think she got exactly what she deserved for being in cahoots with his father.  
  
The time was creeping toward mid-afternoon at a snail's pace, which Lex blamed on his own anticipation. He knew Clark would arrive as soon as he could, and he tried to distract himself with figures from the plant reports, which did actually need his attention. He had just managed to lose himself in the quarterly earnings summary when he heard a voice clearing itself.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
His guard spoke. "There's a Clark Kent to see you."  
  
Lex closed his laptop. "And you know to show him immediately, I assume?"  
  
His guard didn't say anything for a second, but Lex guessed she was rolling her eyes behind her glasses. "He's being escorted as we speak."  
  
As if to prove her right, Clark appeared with another guard in tow, shooting wary glances first at the one behind him and then at the other as she backed away.  
  
"So what do you think?" Lex couldn't help but ask, trying to stem his amusement at Clark's wide-eyed appraisal of his new guards.  
  
"Is this where I'm supposed to say I like what you've done with the place?" Clark asked teasingly. He grinned as he spoke, and Lex was sure he wasn't the only one whose breath caught at the sight.  
  
"If it is?" he asked, leaning back in his chair.  
  
"Then I like what you've done with the place," he said on cue, tossing his jacket over the back of the nearest chair. As always, Clark was dressed in jeans and flannel, all earnest bright-eyed teenager -- just the way Lex liked him. It hit him in that moment how much he'd missed Clark the past several weeks. It had been easy to ignore when he'd been so busy, but now the ache hit him with its full force. Lex watched as Clark stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and shrugged as he continued. "Of course since I'm not sure what you've actually done..."  
  
Lex laughed as he stood, coming around to lean against the edge of his desk. A quick jerk of his head dismissed his guards, and they quietly closed the door behind them as they left the room. "Just a few enhancements to make sure we don't have a repeat of a few weeks ago."  
  
"Like?" Clark prompted.  
  
"The usual. Alarms, cameras. Every bell and whistle money could buy."  
  
Clark's expression was uneasy as he glanced around. "Cameras?"  
  
"You don't have to worry, Clark," Lex said, hoping his friend could sense his sincerity. "I've had safeguards put in place. You're safe here, I promise."  
  
He looked at him for a long moment, eyes searching Lex's face, before his concern faded into a soft smile. "I know. I trust you, Lex." He took a hesitant step forward, moving a little closer.  
  
Lex took that as the sign he'd been waiting for, and closed the distance left between them until Lex's mouth was on Clark's, kissing him with all the pent-up frustration from their weeks apart. "I know you do," he said when he pulled away for breath.  
  
"I missed you," Clark confessed in a rush, half-flustered even as he reached for Lex, hands settling on his sides to keep him close -- not that Lex was trying to move away.  
  
"The feeling is decidedly mutual," Lex said. "I would've come back earlier, but..."  
  
"You needed to deal with your dad," Clark finished. "I understand." His hands on Lex tightened. "That doesn't mean I liked it."  
  
Lex let his fingers trail across Clark's cheek. "Speaking of fathers, I wasn't sure how yours would feel if I stopped by the farm, so I erred on the side of caution and stayed away."  
  
Clark seemed to wince a little. "He's okay. Not great, but okay. He's still freaked you know about -- well, you know -- but he's dealing." Clark leaned against him, a welcome press of heat. "I didn't even start to try to explain this."  
  
"Probably wise," Lex laughed. "I'd rather not have him come after me, especially so soon after my own father tried it."  
  
"Lex..." The worry was back in Clark's eyes. "Are you sure everything's settled with Lionel?"  
  
He sighed. "You know how he is. All I can do is be ready for the next time he tries something. Until then, I keep playing the game so he doesn't catch me by surprise." Lex didn't feel the need to explain everything he already had in the works to leverage against his father, the plots and machinations whose wheels were already turning. They weren't the part of himself he wanted to share with Clark if he didn't have to. "I've survived this long. I have faith that I'll continue to do so."  
  
Clark still look troubled. "It's just that he's such bad news."  
  
"I'm aware," Lex said, eyebrow raising in inquiry. "But do you really want to spend our time together talking about _Lionel_?"  
  
His intimating tone brought a flush of color to Clark's face. "No," he admitted.  
  
"Good, because I know it wasn't on my plans either," Lex told him, lips tugging upward at the glazed look he saw looking back at him.  
  
"You have plans?" Clark said.  
  
"Well I did promise to show you the renovations on the castle," Lex said. "There's still dozens of other rooms we could inspect."  
  
"Oh, really?" Clark asked, starting to return Lex's smile. "Like?"  
  
"Well, there's the master bedroom," Lex deadpanned, false innocence on his face, even as his voice grew husky. "I've might've had a few things added in there that would be of interest."  
  
"Like the cameras, you mean?" Clark teasingly shook his head. "I always knew you were kinky, Lex."  
  
Lex finally gave in to temptation and grinned. "Oh, you have no idea."  
  
"Then maybe you should show me." He planted a fast kiss on the corner of Lex's mouth. "The renovations, I mean."  
  
"That can be arranged," Lex said. "But first..."  
  
Even as he pulled Clark in for another kiss, even as he let himself stop thinking about anything but the glorious feel of Clark under his hands and mouth, Lex knew he'd made a decision that could come back to haunt him. His feelings for Clark made him vulnerable, and he was already a well-known weakness of his, one Lionel would not hesitate to exploit, especially if he ever truly understood the nature of Clark's gifts. As just a friend, Clark had been a liability to Lex; as his lover, he could prove disastrous to him for so many reasons. This move was a clear tactical error.  
  
But Lex couldn't stop himself, and it was easy to quiet his own doubts with the fact that he had long ago let Clark in too far to stop it now. Like the sun's gravity pulling the planets into orbit all those eons ago, it seemed inevitable and unstoppable. Lex was past the point of rescue. He had given Clark the power to destroy him long ago, and Clark had done the same when he'd trusted Lex with his secrets. Whatever the future held for them, Lex was almost certain they'd have to face it together. They seemed too entangled to unravel now.  
  
Maybe Clark's friend Trance had been right, he decided. While there didn't seem to exist a word that could describe what was between them, Lex had a few in mind that might work.  
  
One was destiny; the other was love.  
  
**  
  
_Trance sits alone in the light of the moon and thinks of Lex and Clark. She casts her mind through all of the possibilities she can find for them, tracing path after path, each more fantastic than the last. No matter how many she follows, no matter through what twists and turns their choices offer, she can no longer find her way back to that icy-cold cavern, to the possible future that brought it crumbling down on their possible future selves. She sees so many futures spread out before them that it is almost too dizzying to try and chase them to their ends; like a pilot riding out a particularly tricky slipstream route, she can only give herself over to instinct and hope for the best._  
  
_Given that she knows them, Trance hopes that the future they choose is one of the more pleasant ones, but even after her intervention they remain the unlikeliest. There are a great many obstacles between Clark Kent, Lex Luthor and real happiness; she's not even sure she could plot out the right course._  
  
_Trance also can't find the end that explains why these two called to her from across the galaxies, to this moment to change the futures that lay before them. She doesn't know how, or if, she has helped her ultimate mission on this interlude to an archaic system and its one inhabited planet, but she likes them, Lex and Clark, so she can't regret the detour._  
  
_Because, no matter what the future, in these moments she has helped create something beautiful, something bright and chaotic and wonderful in the way these two have come together. And Trance has always believed in the power of beautiful things, whether they be small like the love between two people or huge like the collisions of galaxies that give life to new stars._  
  
_Because beautiful things have a way of changing the universe._  
  
  
**The End.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to LJ in 2010.
> 
> Author's Notes, (aka the explanation of this cracktastic premise): Back when both Andromeda and Smallville were relatively new (and both being shot on the same lot), one of those behind-the-scene shows revealed that the actors from the shows played hockey together sometimes, which is hilarious because it's Hercules versus Superman on ice. This fact always stuck in my head, so when I was thinking about ways to play with canon to write this story, Trance Gemini from Andromeda immediately came to mind. She is, after all, a seemingly immortal avatar of a yellow sun who manipulates people and events to further her own agenda, all while being cute and perky.
> 
> If I were to try and think where Lex (and Clark) might fit into the Andromeda canon (and Trance's ultimate goals in the Andromeda canon)...I have just say this to say: genetic immunities and Nietzscheans. :)
> 
> (FYI: my Trance is more based on early Trance than late Trance, both personality and mythology-wise. If you watched the show, you know what I mean.)
> 
> The opening poetry of this fic and its title was meant to mirror the names and openings of Andromeda episodes; the reference to Trance's belief in beautiful things is a nod to the Season 1 episode, "Fear and Loathing in the Milky Way."


End file.
